


Restitution

by hazel_3017



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Mad Max: Fury Road!AU, Mpreg, Non-Graphic Stillborn Birth, Several Minor Character Death(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-10
Updated: 2015-11-10
Packaged: 2018-04-30 21:24:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 30,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5180252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hazel_3017/pseuds/hazel_3017
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sidney longs for freedom. Geno searches for home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Restitution

**Author's Note:**

> I can't believe it's done! Finally! This is the Mad Max!AU of my dreams, and I'm super excited to share it with you all. 
> 
> (It probably can be read without having seen the film, but it definitely makes more sense if you have.)
> 
> I began forming out the idea for this fic on tumblr back in July and it's been a slow and laborious process to get to this point. It absolutely wouldn't have happened without the list of people who have helped and encouraged me along the way. Thank you so much for holding my hand through all of it. 
> 
> Special thanks to North and Arcade who sparked the idea, and Arcade for checking to make sure it wasn't shit throughout. Many thanks to starmorgs, book23worm, and theminiummark who let me whine and complain about how difficult this fic was to write, and who assured me I could do it anyway. 
> 
> Finally, thank you so, so much to theladyscribe who undertook the mammoth task of betaing this and had to suffer through my inability to keep my tenses straight. You're a star and a queen, and I bow before your glory XDD

******

**SIDNEY**

**

Sidney knows his child is dead even before Danny’s face goes carefully blank and he opens his mouth to say, “I’m so sorry, Sid. There is no heartbeat.” His voice is even, almost placid, but Sidney has known him long enough he can hear the sadness underneath.

There is no heartbeat and there has been no movement for three days straight. His child is dead; Danny has only confirmed what he already knew.

“Will you cut it out?”

Danny shakes his head as he puts away his medical kit, his eyes pitying despite himself, Sidney thinks. “Can’t risk you bleeding too much, and we’re low on blood bags as it is. You’ll have to give birth naturally.”

“A stillborn.”

“Yes.”

Sidney strokes his hands over his stomach, feeling the tautness of the skin and the dead child underneath. It’s fortunate, he tells himself. The child is lucky to be dead.

Now it won’t have to grow up in a world without mercy, a world without peace.

Bettman’s world.

“Are you okay? Is there anything I can do?”

Sidney shakes his head at Danny’s empty question.

He is a good midwife, a good caretaker for Bettman’s many brides, but they are not friends by any means, and all Sidney wants is to be left alone for a few precious moments. He wants to grieve the death of his child in peace.

Danny sighs. “He’ll want to induce birth as soon as I tell him.” He gathers his kit and lifts off his knees, taking a few short strides to reach the charred block of wood that functions as a door to the small examination room. The room was lit on fire once, by one of Bettman’s wives long before Sidney’s time.

The woman came away with massive burns and survived the ordeal only by Danny’s intervention and Bettman’s mercy—a mock version of it, anyway.

She is dead now. Dead like Sidney’s child.

“I can hold off the news until tonight, Sidney,” Danny says, pausing with his hand on the door. There is no handle, no latch for the door to fit into. There is only a set of hinges for the door to push inwards and outwards. “A day at the most, but that is all the time I can give you.”

He gives Sidney a long look before he leaves, pointed and knowing, and Sidney feels his breath hitch.

 _Get out now_ , is what Danny doesn’t say.

Sidney feels a second of pure unadulterated fear as he realises Danny must have heard them talking, must have realised they have been making plans to escape for some time now.

Sidney exhales shakily, forcibly reminding himself that Danny is a good man, and that if he’d told Bettman, Sidney and his sibling brides would already have lost all privileges; they’d be locked up in the Vault with no chance of escape.

He closes his eyes, taking a moment to breathe carefully. They are fortunate it was Danny who overheard them. Anyone else, and Bettman would have known in minutes.

Sidney wonders how long Danny has known. He wonders if he wants to join them, if he wants to herd his kids onto the war rig and let Taylor drive them away from this miserable place.

Danny is a gentle soul despite his alpha nature; he was forced into Bettman’s service as much as Sidney was.

“Sid? Are you in here?”

He opens his eyes to see little Nikky poke his head through the door hesitantly.

Sidney sighs softly. Solitude is a privilege rarely granted in their world, and it is not something Sidney usually lets himself long for, but just this once, he wishes he were granted a moment of reprieve.

He never wanted to get pregnant, not by Bettman’s seed, but the child he bears is as much a part of Sidney as it is Bettman, and now it is dead. Gone, but not. Still trapped inside Sidney’s womb.

Sidney wishes for a moment of silence, a moment to mourn his child, but—

Theirs is a world of hardship, and there are people depending on him. Sidney has to keep it together for now, has to be strong. There will be time to grieve later.

“Sid?” Nikky says again, and this time, Sidney manages to dredge up the bare minimum of a smile as he waves the boy inside.

Nikky breaks into a relieved grin and steps into the room, so big and so tall Sidney feels as if the room shrinks with every step he takes, until he falls to his knees by Sidney’s pallet and all he can see is little Nikky.

As he always is when laying eyes on the boy, Sidney feels amazed at the sheer size of him; he’s half-disbelieving that an omega could ever grow so tall—only Chara, Bettman’s first lieutenant, stands taller in the Citadel, his height considerable even for an alpha.

Nikita has only been Bettman’s bride for the better part of a month, but already the other brides, the younger ones, delight in teasing him. _Little Nikky_ , they call him, not unkindly.

There is no cruelty among the brides. Not anymore. Not for a long time; ever since Sidney became Bettman’s new favourite and the harem went through a generational shift, Sidney has fostered close relationships with his sibling brides, encouraging patience and kindness among them.

The world is cruel enough without them wishing each other ill will.

“How are you feeling?” Sidney asks as Nikky clasps his hand around Sidney’s, his grip tight and grounding. He eyes Nikky carefully, searching for any visible sign of damage or hurt. “Last night was your first time.”

Eighteen is young but still eighteen. Still adulthood in the eyes of the law and in the eyes of Bettman.

Sidney had protected Nikky for weeks now, but two days past had seen Nikky’s birthday come and gone and Bettman would wait no longer to claim his new bride. Not even Sidney, his beloved favourite, had been enough to tempt him away.

“I’m sorry,” Sidney says. _I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you any longer. I’m sorry this is our lives. I’m sorry my child is dead._

Sidney takes in a stuttering breath. His child is dead.

He closes his eyes for a brief moment before forcing himself to focus back on Nikky. “Are you okay? I know the first time is always bad, no matter how well you think you have prepared for it. Just remember, Bettman doesn’t own you. You are not—”

“A thing to be owned,” Nikky finishes, smiling shyly at Sidney, and for a second, Sidney misses his mother so much he thinks he’ll die from it.

Not even a full week has gone by since they lowered her body into the ground. She’s been Sidney’s rock for so long, the only reason he keeps going— _Remember, Sidney. Bettman can call us slaves, but we are not things to be owned._

Now she’s dead, his child is dead, and Sidney is still here.

Nikky gives a little shrug. “I’m okay, I think. It hurt, but I’ll survive.”

He’s not okay, but Sidney won’t call him out on it now. As long as he’s not physically hurt, Sidney knows to wait until Nikky has digested what happened. He’s still in shock, most likely, still suppressing the reality of what has happened to him; the rage at the injustice he has suffered will come later.

Sidney is sure of that. He knows from experience.

“Good,” he says fiercely, squeezing the hand in his. He lowers his voice into a whisper, mindful of curious ears in the hall outside as he says, “Are you ready for this evening? You still wish to come?”

“Yes. My family has been dead for a long time.” Nikky gives another shrug. “There is nothing for me here.” He lifts his free hand to rub over the tribal tattoo on his left bicep. It denotes his place of birth—outside the Citadel. A rarity these days.

“Good,” Sidney says again. He closes his eyes briefly, feels the faint stirrings of something resembling excitement and hope building inside his chest. It’s such an unfamiliar sensation, Sidney hardly knows how to label it.

“It won’t be long now. Won’t be long until we are free. We’ll be gone from this place and we’ll never have to come back. I swear it.”

Nikky’s eyes gleam in the dim light. “Free,” he says, voice hushed with longing and excitement.

“Free,” Sidney echoes. His child is dead, his mother is dead, but Sidney is not.

He will be free.

**

 

Nikky is kind enough to help Sidney off the pallet and guide him back to the Vault. Following behind them at a respectful distance is a war boy. He’s been escorting Nikky through the halls, and is joined by Flower, Sidney’s personal guard. Sidney is not allowed to go anywhere without Flower’s presence.

 _For your protection, darling,_ Bettman had said. _There are dangers outside these walls._

The brides are sometimes allowed outside the Vault, but only Sidney has been granted permission to visit the valley, though never without an escort of three or four guards. It’s a sham. The people of the valley would never hurt him; Sidney was one of them once, his sister too. His parents _are_ them. Had been.

The valley poses no threat to Sidney.

When Bettman says _danger_ , what he means is his own war boys.

“Sidney!”

They halt at the sound of the loud call, and Sidney turns to see the youngest of Danny’s kids running towards them.

“Cameron,” he says, surprised. “What are you doing here?”

Cameron skids to a stop, doubled over to catch his breath for a moment. “Sorry. I made something for you,” he says when his breathing evens out. He straightens and makes to reach for something inside one of his pant pockets.

Flower reaches over immediately, grabbing his arm and dragging him back a step. “I don’t think so, kid,” he says gruffly.

“Hey!” Cameron’s face twists in pain as he claws uselessly at Flower’s grip.

“It’s okay, Flower,” Sidney says. “Let him go.” He eyes Cameron placidly. “Cameron wouldn’t hurt us. He’s a good boy.”

Cameron blushes fiercely at his words, scowling in annoyance as he nods reluctantly in agreement.

Flower snorts disbelievingly at him, but he is a soldier first and foremost; he follows Sidney’s order. “Don’t even think about trying anything, boy,” he warns as he lets his hand slip away from Cameron’s arm.

“I’m not a boy,” Cameron mutters mulishly under his breath. “Here,” he says, reaching into his pocket to withdraw a sheet of paper before holding it out in Sidney’s direction, waving it at him carelessly.

Sidney has to hide an amused smile at the way Cameron won’t meet his gaze, eyes stubbornly trained on the ground as he shuffles his feet.

He’s an alpha, only fourteen, and still more boy than man, much to his consternation; he’s had the biggest crush on Sidney ever since he was a small child.

“Thank you,” Sidney says, and accepts the proffered paper. He glances down at it curiously and can’t quite contain his awed gasp. “Cameron! Did you make this? It’s amazing.”

He’s known in a vague kind of way that Cameron is skilled with a pen and brush, but he’s never seen anything like this.

It’s a painting, a bird’s view of the Citadel, so vivid and lifelike Sidney thinks for a moment it’s a photograph—a foolish thought. There are no more cameras to capture picture-perfect images.

There are a lot of things that are no more.

“It’s amazing,” Sidney repeats. He strokes his fingers over where Cameron has shaded in the people below. They’re so tiny, faces all blurred together. He looks up. “Thank you.”

“Whatever.” Cameron’s blush reaches the top of his ears, his cropped hair showing them off prominently. Nikky stares at him, fascinated.

Flower shakes his head. “All right, kid. Get out of here. You’re holding us up.”

Cameron grumbles at the injustice of being bossed around, but a swift blow to the back of his head by Flower’s hand has him moving down the corridor the same way he came from.

Sidney shakes his head at them. “You shouldn’t treat him so harshly,” he scolds Flower. He rests a hand over his stomach as they start walking again, more a habit now than any hope of feeling his child move. “He’s just a boy.”

“That boy,” Flower says, a sharp edge to his words, “will be a man soon enough, and he needs to know he is not entitled to anything special just because he’s an alpha. Including you.”

Sidney shivers. He’s met war boys with an unwavering belief in their own entitlement before. He spares a quick look at the other war boy, meeting his dark, appraising eyes for a second. Sidney doesn’t recognise him.

“Cameron isn’t like that. None of the Brière kids are.”

Danny has raised them well. He has instilled in them as many morals as their world allows.

Flower doesn’t answer.

They walk on, Nikky keeping up a chattering stream of everything and nothing. Anything to dispel the sudden tension.

“You are dismissed,” Flower tells the war boy when they reach the Vault, his stare steely enough that the man does little else but give a sharp nod.

“Sir,” he says, and walks off.

Sidney watches him leave, breathing a little easier when he is gone from sight. “Who was that? I haven’t seen him before.”

“New recruit,” Flower says distractedly, looking after the war boy with deeply furrowed brows. He looks worried. “Rinaldo, I think.”

Sidney frowns. “Do you think he’s going to be a problem?”

“No,” Flower says, knowing Sidney well enough now to read between the lines. He lowers his voice, so low Sidney has to strain his ears to hear him. “We’ll get out. I promise you.” The look in his eyes is so intent Sidney can do nothing but trust that he is right.

He nods once before following Nikky into the Vault, settled by the knowledge that Flower will stand guard outside; no alpha but Bettman is allowed into the Vault. His brides are for him and him alone.

“Sid!” Beau says as soon as he sees him. He rises from where Olli’s been massaging his feet; he’s not even three months pregnant and already his feet are swollen.

“The baby?” Beau whispers when he reaches him.

Sidney shakes his head silently, and has to look away from the way Beau’s face crumples. He holds still as Beau closes his arms around him.

“I’m so sorry, Sid,” he whispers into Sidney’s hair. “I’m so, so sorry.”

Three days is a long time for the baby not to move. They had suspected already, but Danny hadn’t been available before now, busy with one of Bettman’s war boys—a foolish beta who’d almost gotten himself blown up in a raid the week before.

Danny is the closest thing to a doctor in the Citadel, and Sidney has had no choice but to wait until he found time to see him. To have Danny confirm what he already knew is harder than Sidney had thought it would be.

His child is dead.

_Dead, dead, dead._

“Are you okay?”

Sidney shrugs as Beau pulls back. He doesn’t want to talk about this. He doesn’t want to face the reality of it yet.

“No, of course you’re not,” Beau mutters, more to himself than anything else, Sidney suspects. Beau searches his face, his own a mask of concern. “Who else knows?”

“Only Danny.” Sidney’s eyes flicker to where Nikky has joined Olli and Derrick by the large glass windows turned towards the valley below. The windows are the only glass construction in the Citadel.

Derrick is pointing at something on the outside, giggling and chattering at Olli and Nikky.

They are so very young. All of them.

“I don’t want them to know, Beau,” Sidney tells him. “They have enough to worry about without having to think about this too.”

Beau nods. “Of course. If that’s what you want.”

Sidney smiles at him gratefully, and feels exhaustion seep through him from how much effort the simple gesture requires. There has never been much to smile about, not when he lived in the valley with his parents and his sister, and not now as one of Bettman’s brides.

At least before, he’d been some semblance of happy. If not having much cause for joy, he’d been content, at least, with the knowledge that he was loved and with his family.

Now there is not even that.

Sidney is loved. He knows he is, but from afar, from his mother down in the valley—when she was still alive—and from Taylor. He rarely gets to see his sister, though. As one of Bettman’s most trusted warriors, her time is spent more on the road than in the Citadel. She has no dealings with Bettman’s wives, Sidney included.

His sibling brides care about him and consider him something of an authority figure, and Flower too, but it’s not the same. The baby would have loved him, he thinks. Not even Bettman could have kept Sidney from his child, and he would have been loved. Unconditionally.

Sidney looks down at the paper in his hand as Beau rejoins the other brides across the room, giving him a moment to himself. His eyes settle back on the people in the painting. They’re so tiny, so very, very tiny. He wishes he were one of them again.

Maybe one day he will be.

His fingers slip on the paper, and Sidney startles. He narrows his eyes, turning the paper over in his hands and is surprised to see there is a second sheet of paper pressed along the first one. It must have shifted by Sidney’s handling, the paper angled so that the corners have slipped outside the frame of the first one.

Sidney blinks.

He turns his back to his sibling brides, sucking in a shocked breath of air when he sees what is written on the second sheet of paper.

To read is a rare skill, but Sidney is one of Bettman’s brides; they suffer many hardships at his hands—and in return are afforded certain luxuries.

Bettman has never cared for stupidity, and he considers himself something of a preserver of culture. All of his brides are taught to read and write, and they have the entirety of his book collection at their disposal.

As Sidney reads, he recognises Danny’s writing, though the paper is thankfully unsigned—a precaution, lest it should fall into the wrong hands. Sidney is glad Danny has had the sense.

His eyes grow wide as he takes in Danny’s pleas for him and his sons to join them in their escape from the Citadel, a confirmation of what Sidney had feared; Danny had overheard them planning.

Sidney feels that same feeling of fear from before. Was it possible someone else had too? Someone more loyal to Bettman?

“Sid?”

He spins around to meet Beau’s concerned gaze. “Is everything all right?”

He nods silently, mind racing for a moment. He wonders briefly why Danny hadn’t said anything during his examination, but dispels the thought quickly. Danny is a professional; as an alpha, he is only allotted a certain amount of time with Bettman’s brides. It doesn’t matter that the man is a doctor. If Bettman himself is not there to supervise, he doesn’t want an alpha to spend more time than necessary with his omegas.

Sidney knows Danny would not have wasted that time. Not for anything.

“Beau. I need you to feign ill. I have a message for Danny.”

**

 

Time is running out for them.

Sidney is acutely aware of it, can tell by the sounds of the maids and servant boys bustling in the halls outside the Vault; the rush of activity means that preparation for supper has already begun.

This is their window of opportunity, the brief time when everyone is busy with their duties and Bettman with his own self-importance and theatrical production.

For Bettman, image is everything. He likes to paint himself as a saviour to the people, generous and benevolent. It’s a bald-faced lie no one believes, but one he likes to keep up anyway. When Bettman holds court and grants the people their daily ration of water, that’s when Sidney and his sibling brides will escape. When everyone is distracted by Bettman and scrambling for even just a few drops of precious water.

“Are we really doing this?” Olli whispers nervously. “What if we get caught? I don’t want to be caught.” He shivers, as if imagining what his punishment might be for an attempted escape.

Nothing good, Sidney is sure.

Derrick grins at him. “‘Course we’re doing this. I’d rather die than stay here another day,” he says, his cheerful tone a stark contrast to his dark words.

“Hush. Someone is coming.”

The familiar groan of the Vault’s heavy door prove Beau right, and they wait anxiously, Sidney holding his breath as the door opens, slowly, so slowly.

“What up, omegas?”

He sighs, relieved. “Caelan. Where is your father?” He looks around Caelan, expecting to see Flower, at least, behind him. There is no one there.

“Are you— Are you _alone_?”

Caelan scowls at his incredulous voice. He might be the oldest of Danny’s boys at seventeen, but he is by far the most careless of them. “Relax. We’ll meet up with Fleury and Letang by the drop shaft. There was a commotion earlier with a blood bag on the loose and they had to take care of it. But don’t worry, I’ve got this covered.”

Sidney closes his eyes, pained. He takes a deep breath to steady his nerves.

The plan had been for Flower and his deputy to meet up with Danny and his boys _before_ they came to retrieve Sidney and his sibling brides. Caelan was _not_ supposed to escort the five of them through the halls on his own.

There are so many ways for this to blow up in their faces, but beggars can’t be choosers, and if Caelan is all they get, there is not much to do but accept his help and pray for a successful escape.

“Sid?” Beau asks, looking to him for guidance.

Sidney steels his resolve.

“Time to leave.”

There is enough of an order in his voice that none of them think to argue, hands reaching out to clasp each other until they’re one big line, following behind Caelan and trusting him to guide them to the drop shaft in one piece.

Sidney has never used one of the smaller drop shafts before. They’re used to bring up materials mostly, and he’s only ever been on the big platform whenever he’s been granted time below in the valley. The platform is operated by a multitude of servant boys working the cogs to lower and raise the big metal slab, though, and he wonders who will work the drop shaft if all of them intend to come along.

The answer comes in the form of Zdeno Chara.

Sidney gasps, halting in place as he glances at Flower in betrayal, eyes flitting from face to face frantically.

Whatever he’d thought they would find when they reached the drop shaft, this wasn’t it.

“Relax,” Flower says calmly, keeping his voice low and even as he holds up his hands in a sign of peace. “Relax, Sid. He’s here to help. All of them are.”

Sidney shakes his head, disbelieving, and somewhere behind him, Nikky whimpers in fear.

Chara is Bettman’s top lieutenant, and at his disposal are a deputy and three foot soldiers; the unit has long since been one of Bettman’s fiercest.

Caelan looks between all of them uncertainly. He takes a cautious step in front of Sidney, as if to shield him from view. As if he alone could protect them from Chara and his men.

“Dad?”

“It’s okay, Caelan. Be at ease.” Danny pushes through the small crowd, elbowing aside Marchand and Lucic to step up next to Flower and Chara. His eyes meet Sidney’s. “Sid. I promise, no one is here to take you back. They want to help.”

“Why?”

He’s not expecting Chara to be the one to elaborate. He never talks in anything more than wordless grunts and groans, and he’s not surprised when it’s Chara’s deputy who says, “We are war boys and will be so until we die, but to treat omegas the way Bettman—” Bergeron breaks off, looking too disturbed to continue.

Next to him, Lucic spits on the ground. “Fucking disgrace, it is. A whore omega. Who’s even heard of such a thing? Our ancestors would be rolling in their graves.”

In the time Before, when there had been as many omegas as there are alphas and betas, no one would think to mistreat an omega or to hoard them like rare commodities.

But to be an omega in Bettman’s world is to be a breeder; their only purpose in life is to birth healthy babies and satiate their master’s needs.

Lucic nods at Sidney’s stomach. “If the babe inside you turns out to be like you, it shouldn’t be forced to become a...a _breeder_ ,” he says, disgusted, and Sidney blinks as Chara grunts his agreement.

He’s had no idea that alphas even felt this way anymore; he feels a twinge of guilt for not correcting Lucic’s mistake, for not saying, _My child is dead. My child will be nothing now_.

He is smart enough to realise that they might not be so keen to help if they know the truth, though. He is smart enough to understand that they’re allowing Danny, the only thing resembling a doctor they have, to escape with them because they think he’ll have to care for the babe, that he has to help Sidney during the birth.

Sidney keeps silent.

He feels Beau squeeze his hand in support, and finds the strength to say, “Thank you. Truly.”

Chara nods in acknowledgement. Bergeron too, but the others only scoff, Lucic mumbling a gruff, “Whatever,” under his breath.

“If we’re all done with the small talk,” Flower cuts in, “we need to leave. Now. Bettman will discover something is off soon enough.”

Chara grunts again; a few practiced hand signals have his men turning to the drop shaft, Bergeron opening the latch to the little cart as the others take their place by the cogs.

“Who’s first? We can fit in four at a time, I think.”

“Tanger, you take one of the boys and Sid. He’s big enough he count as two people.”

Sidney shakes his head. “No,” he tells Flower. “I’m going last.” He sets his jaw stubbornly, determined to see his sibling brides down before him. He’s preparing for a fight, but Flower only rolls his eyes exasperatedly.

“Fine,” he says. “We don’t have time to argue about it. Olli, Derrick, and Nikky, go along with Tanger. He’ll protect you when you reach the ground.”

“It’s fine,” Sidney says gently when Nikky looks ready to protest. “We’ll be right behind you. Promise. Go now.”

He ushers them over to the shaft, watching anxiously as they step onto the cart and the old wood creaks ominously under their combined weight.

“It’ll hold,” Marchand pipes up when they start working the cogs. The muscles in his arms are straining under the effort, a fine sheen of sweat covering his forehead. “This old thing has been working since long before any of us were born, and it’ll outlast us all. Don’t worry.”

Sidney nods his thanks, touched by Marchand’s oddly comforting gesture.

It takes some time before the cart makes it all the way below, longer than any of them are comfortable with, and they make as short work as possible to haul the cart back up before preparing for the next drop. Beau and Danny’s boys, this time.

“All right,” Bergeron groans out when they’re ready for the final drop. He’s breathing in short, laboured pants, taking a second to catch his breath before he says, “Go on. We don’t have much time now.”

Sidney imagines they have no time at all. He knows the maids and servant boys must have already finished preparing the evening meal. Only Bettman’s proclamation precludes the war boys from gathering in the mess hall—Bettman will make his way to his brides shortly after.

He steps onto the cart, feeling his stomach roll unpleasantly when Danny and Flower join him and the cart swings dangerously on its suspenders.

He lifts his head to look at Chara and his men as they lower them to the ground. Slowly, so slowly, they make their descent.

“Thank you,” he says again. He doesn’t get a reply. He’s not even sure they heard him.

It’s the last time he sees any of them.

**

 

They waste no time once they reach the others, and Chara’s men must leave for their post immediately, because the cart remains on the ground.

“What now?” Sidney asks anxiously.

Flower shushes him immediately, gesturing for Tanger to make sure the coast is clear before leading them between a small opening in one of the great rock towers with Tanger bringing up the rear.

Sidney doesn’t know the layout here. He was barely a teen when Bettman ripped him out of his mother’s arms, and an omega besides; he’s never been allowed to explore the valley on his own.

He has to trust that Flower and Tanger will deliver them safely to his sister.

His _sister_. Taylor.

Sidney hasn’t been allowed to interact with her for years. She’s an imperator, one of Bettman’s finest—and all she has ever done, she has done in an effort to be close to Sidney.

He’s the oldest, but it’s always been Taylor protecting him.

 _No more_ , he swears silently to himself as Flower leads them deeper through the gap. Sidney is not a thing to be owned. Never again will he be a slave to another; he doesn’t ever want for Taylor to risk her life, her happiness, to protect _him_.

“When we get to the war rig, get inside and stay there. Keep quiet when you feel the rig move,” Flower says. He throws a pointed look at Sidney over his shoulder. “Your reunion with your sister will have to wait until we’re out of the Citadel.”

Sidney nods in understanding, but Flower doesn’t see, already focused on the path ahead of him.

They walk for another five minutes, maybe ten before they reach the end of the gap, and they must be out of time now, surely.

Sidney feels his skin prickle with fear, feels his chest tighten with unease as he becomes convinced that they won’t make it; they’ll be caught before they ever reach the war rig.

“It’s not far now,” Flower says, coming to a stop. He holds out his hand to signal them to a halt, poking his head out of the gap to look first to his left and then to his right.

He turns his head to look left again and releases a strangled cry. “Duper, you fucking bastard!” he hisses. “Warn a man, eh?”

Flower steps out of the gap, gesturing for the others to follow. Sidney bites his lips. He shares a worried look with Beau behind him, watching him shrug helplessly.

Flower has yet to lead him astray; if he trusts this Duper person, Sidney will too.

Sidney steps forward.

He is cautious as he exits the gap, and is greeted by the sight of a big crate on a bigger trolley. Standing by the handlebar is a man Sidney has only seen from afar.

His name is Pascal and he is Taylor’s second—Sidney feels his fear ease somewhat. He knows this man will not hurt them.

“Oh,” Beau says when he follows out after Sidney and sees the crate. “This is how we’ll get into the rig, then? I had wondered.”

Flower pulls a face. “It’s not ideal, but from here to the war rig there is only open space; there is no place to hide. We’re going to have to smuggle you on board in this.” He knocks his fist against the big crate.

Sidney sighs, but knows there is nothing for it.

“Someone help me inside.”

“I’ll help you, but you should probably go in last,” Danny says, walking up to Sidney and looking at his pregnant stomach pointedly. He turns to Flower. “You’ll load the crate onto the rig, yes?”

“Yes. Too big of a risk to let you out before. No one will think twice about the crate, though. We ship wares for Bullet Farm and Gas Town all the time.”

“Then you should go last,” Danny repeats, turning to look at Sidney again. “So we can get you out quick once we’re inside.”

Sidney nods, picking up on the subtext of Danny’s words. His child is no more, but he’s still at risk of going into early labour, especially if his stress levels rise as they tend to in close quarters. It’s safer to get him out of the crate as soon as possible.

“The kids first,” Pascal says, nodding at the boys. “Then the brides and the doctor. Then you, Sidney.” He looks intently at Sidney, eyeing him closely as he takes in his pregnant belly and scantily clad form.

Sidney wonders what he sees in him. He wonders if he reminds him of Taylor.

“Come on,” Danny says. He waits until his kids make it inside the crate before he takes Sidney’s arm gently, helping him step onto the trolley and following the others inside. Beau catches his eyes and they share another worried look. Behind them, Danny’s kids are elbowing each other for space while Nikky and Derrick stare at them in bemusement, and Olli steadfastly ignores them all.

“It’ll be a tight fit,” Flower warns them when Sidney and Danny have made their way inside. He climbs onto the trolley, moving to help Pascal fit the lid of the crate into its latch. “And dark.”

“Hang tight,” Pascal says. They shut the lid over the crate.

Everything goes black.

**

 

Inside the crate is hot and tight for space, and Sidney hardly dares to breathe as Flower and Pascal wheel them through the Citadel, the sound of the trolley’s squeaky wheels loud enough to be heard even from inside the crate.

As they draw closer to the war rig, he can hear the roaring of the crowd gathering before the cliff where the waterfall emerges, and the echo of Bettman’s booming voice as he addresses his people. Sidney prays it’s the last time he’ll have to hear the sound of his hated voice.

There’s a tense moment when the crate starts sliding on the trolley, muffled voices on the other side cursing as they struggle to load the crate onto the rig. There’s a loud noise as it lands roughly on the floor of the rig, and Sidney and the others jolt sideways from the force of the movement, a multitude of limbs pressing painfully against each other.

“Son of a bitch,” Caelan whispers, his voice unnaturally loud inside the crate.

“Sorry,” Olli mumbles, and Sidney suspects Caelan has been the unfortunate victim of a stray elbow or foot. He feels like giggling all of a sudden, half hysterical; there’s a rush of adrenaline churning inside of him.

They’re going to make it. Taylor will start the engine and drive them away.

They’ll make a successful escape and Sidney will never have to step foot inside the Citadel again.

Finally, he breathes easy.

“We’re moving,” Danny says. He pushes his hands against the lid of the crate, testing the weight of the wood. “Caelan, Carson, help me out.”

The boys shift, careful as they edge around Sidney to reach the lid. With the three of them together, they manage to push the lid off the latch, the wood banging loudly against the metal floor of the war rig as it falls away.

Sidney rears back with a hand over his eyes, shielding himself from the sudden brightness. They live in a desert world, though, and it takes no more than a couple of seconds for his vision to adjust to the light.

“Welcome aboard,” Flower says, grinning at them widely as Tanger steps up next to him. Flower reaches out with his hand in offer.

Sidney sighs in relief and takes the proffered hand.

He’s finally free.

**

Flower and Tanger guide them to a hatch in the floor that opens up into a tunnel running along the length of the rig. It leads into a secret hold connected to the backseat of the cab, Flower explains, and he insists that Sidney and his sibling brides must remain hidden there until Taylor herself determines it’s safe for them to come out.

The tunnel is barely big enough to crawl, and moving through the cramped space is a painstakingly slow process made even more difficult by the rough movement of the rig. Sidney has never cared much for small spaces, not since he was a teen and Bettman would lock him up as punishment for misbehaving. There had been nothing but cramped space and darkness in those moments, and Sidney, alone for hours and hours.

“Olli,” Sidney grits out, his voice travelling down the line to where Olli is at the head. “How much further?” The rig can’t be more than fifteen metres long, but crawling along the length of it in total darkness, Sidney feels as if it’s a mile long.

“Just a few more steps. I can see the opening of the hold.”

Sure enough, a few seconds after, the tunnel lights up with a dim glow as Olli pushes aside the ratty covering of the hold and disappears inside. He’s quickly followed by Derrick and Nikky, and then, mercifully, Sidney.

The hold is even smaller than the crate had been, but at least it is lit and considerably more comfortable with its red, plush pillows. There’s barely room for the five of them, though, and when Danny enters the hold after Beau, the six of them are cramped uncomfortably together.

Sidney is grateful Danny’s boys are not with them and had made their way to the front of the vehicle with Flower and Tanger instead.

“They’ll jump cars,” Flower told them before they entered the tunnel. “Duper’s got extra seats in his.”

Besides the war rig, there are two cars and two motorcycles in Taylor’s entourage, Sidney knows. He is not familiar with their drivers, but he’s been assured they’re all loyal to their imperator—Taylor suffers no fools. She’s long since gotten rid of the men that doubted her command.

“I don’t like this,” Nikky says when they manage to get settled inside the hold. He winces at the loud noises outside and presses his hands against the surface above them to hold still against the jostling of the rig. “Why can’t we sit in the cab?”

“It’s not safe, Nikky. Bettman must have figure out we’re gone by now. He’ll send out his fleet for us.”

Nikky pulls a face, half-obscured by the dim light inside the tight space.

“It’ll be okay,” Sidney says. He grabs one of Nikky’s hands and threads their fingers together, before squeezing it in comfort. “Taylor and her men will protect us. They’ll keep us safe. And if not,” he tells Nikky, his voice going dark with promise, “we’ll protect ourselves.”

He’s not going back to Bettman. Not ever.

The rest of his sibling brides huddle closer to him, until they’re all clutching at one another, seeking whatever comfort there is to be had. They’re all on edge, the silence tense with fear and worry as the rig moves across the uneven desert road at full speed.

Sidney has never been inside a moving vehicle before. He’s never been inside a vehicle, period. As an omega born in the Citadel to Bettman’s world, the valley is all he’s ever known.

He finds he is ambivalent about the experience. He can feel the rig move, feels the building of nausea at the more heavy jostling and the cold prickle of unease at just sitting there, no window to look out of or any way to tell the passage of time.

How far are they from the Citadel? Has Bettman already deployed his fleet?

There is nothing to do but sit and wait, to feel the fast beat of his heart as he shares anxious looks with Beau and sometimes Danny. No one says anything. Sidney doesn’t know that there is something _to_ say, except pray and hope that they’ll make their escape successfully.

A sudden loud noise from the outside has them all jolting in fear.

Sidney can hear an unfamiliar whizzing sound as something crashes into the side of the rig; they slam into one side of the hold as the rig tilts sideways for one heartstopping moment before righting itself. The smell of smoke is in the air, and Sidney gasps, trying desperately to brace himself as the war rig veers sharply to one side for a second, followed by the sound of what can only be an explosion.

“What the hell was that?” Beau cries out, and all Sidney can think is _Bettman, Bettman, Bettman._

But that doesn’t make sense. It’s too soon, he thinks. It has to be too soon. There is no way Bettman could have caught up to them yet, and it’s Danny who says, “Buzzards!” He curses heavily under his breath. “We must have buzzards on our tail.”

“What’s a buzzard?”

“Desert rats. They roam the Wastelands for nomads and other travellers. They’re raiders.”

“I _really_ don’t like this,” Nikky speaks up again. He’s not even trying to hide the fear in his voice.

The hatch above them opens suddenly, Tanger staring down at them, grim-faced.

“Danny, we need you. One of the cars was totalled.”

“The boys?”

“Still riding with Duper. It was Suttsy’s car. Horny managed to pick him up on his bike and get him over to the cab of the rig, but he’s badly hurt.”

“Any casualties?”

“We lost Downie.”

Danny grimaces regretfully at Tanger’s terse words, but he loses some of the tension that’s gathered in his shoulders, easing with obvious relief now that he knows his sons are safe.

“Do _not_ come out until someone comes to get you,” Danny orders them before he lets Tanger help him out of the hold, and for a split second, just as Danny steps to the side of the hatch, Sidney has a clear visual of his sister.

She’s in the driver’s seat, turning her head around to bark orders at Danny and Tanger; she meets Sidney’s eyes just as the hatch settles over them again.

Sidney exhales shakily.

His parents are dead, his child is dead, but Taylor is here. Sidney is here.

After years and years apart, they will finally be together again. His only regret is that his mother didn’t get to live to see it. It had been her greatest desire.

“That was you sister?” Derrick asks, awed, forgetting to be scared for a moment. “I’ve only ever seen her from afar. How old is she?”

“Nineteen. She’s Bettman’s youngest imperator.”

There’s a sudden thud against the hatch as someone’s fist pounds against it in warning.

“Hang on!” Flower’s voice yells out. “We’re driving into a sandstorm. It’s going to be—”

A roaring sound unlike anything Sidney has ever heard drowns out the rest of his words. The rig shakes ominously, the metal groaning under the onslaught of the sandstorm slamming into its sides. Sidney thinks it can’t possibly hold. The storm will tear the rig apart.

He starts to cough as a gust of wind whorls through the cracks of the hold, carrying with it sand and dust particles, making it hard for them to breathe. The force of it has the light flickering weakly before going dark.

“Sidney!” Nikky cries out, scared. He’s eighteen, a giant of an omega, but he’s such a gentle soul, such a sweet boy.

Sidney reaches out for him blindly, hand closing around what he thinks is an arm before drawing him to him, bending over his bowed head to shield him from the wind as much as possible.

“Beau?” Sidney calls out. He’s been quiet for too long. Olli too. Sidney wants to open his eyes to look for them, to check to see if they’re okay, but he’s got nothing to protect his eyes with and the strong wind makes it difficult to see anyway.

“Here!”

Sidney feels a hand grip his ankle.

“We’re here. We’re okay!”

The storm seems to go on forever, and they have no choice but to ride it out, lungs constricting painfully on the polluted air. Sidney’s skin itches, the rough sand making its way inside his flimsy clothing. He tries to ignore it, tries to breathe in calmly, but he coughs more than anything, swallowing mouthfuls of dust before finally, the wind abates and a fine layer of sand is left covering their clothing and the floor of the hold.

At least they can breathe again.

“Everyone okay?”

Derrick coughs a little. “Yeah. Thirsty,” he says.

Sidney swallows, wincing at the scrape against his dry throat. He wouldn’t mind some water himself.

He cranes his neck, looking up as someone fiddles with the hatch from the other side before it opens. Flower’s tired eyes stare down at them. He looks a mess, covered by sand and dried blood. “Coast is clear,” he says. “Boss says you can come out now.”

Sidney blinks up at him, and it takes him a moment to realise that they’re not moving anymore. The rig is silent.

“Come on,” Flower says encouragingly. He holds out a hand for Sidney to take, like before.

Sidney takes it this time too, letting Flower pull him out of the hold. He has to blink a few times against the bright light of the sun, but his eyes adjust quickly enough. He looks around the cab of the rig, searching for Taylor and not seeing her anywhere.

“Outside,” Danny tells him from where he’s leaning over a man in the passenger seat.

The man is slumped over, head hanging loosely to his chest. He looks dead.

“Is that—?”

“Yes.” Danny sighs sadly. “It’s Suttsy. I couldn’t save him.” He lifts his gaze to Sidney before pointing at the open door by the driver’s seat. “She’s outside,” he says again.

Sidney swallows painfully and nods his thanks. He spares the dead man a final glance before he makes his way out of the rig. He’s helped down by Tanger, who looks a little worse for wear, but otherwise okay. Sidney manages to dredge up a smile for him, is about to ask about Danny’s boys when someone barrels into his side, mindful of his pregnant belly.

“Sidney,” Taylor whispers into his neck, her strong arms wrapping around him into a fierce embrace.

Sidney grips her back just as fiercely, barely noticing Tanger giving them a fond look before disappearing around the rig.

“I’ve missed you so much,” Sidney chokes out.

She’s so big now, so far removed from the five-year-old who’d tearfully waved goodbye to him when Bettman’s war boys had carried him off. He’s seen her since then, but only glimpses and only from afar. To get to hold her in his arms again is almost surreal.

“Look at you!” he says as he pulls back, lifting a hand to wipe away the tears rolling down her cheeks. “You’re so beautiful!”

She stands shorter than Sidney. She is slim with compact muscles, dressed in practical clothing and a metal contraption attached to the arm that cuts off just below her elbow; she was born without the limb. Her hair is buzzed short, and black war paint covers the top half of her face, but her blue eyes shine bright.

She looks exactly like the imperator she is, and Sidney is so, so proud of her.

“My little Tay-Tay,” he whispers, lips stretching out into what feels like an impossibly wide grin when Taylor bursts into a startled laugh.

“No one has called me that in so long!” she says delightedly. “Mom never did, after.”

Sidney sobers at the mention of their mother. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there when you buried her,” he says. “I wasn’t allowed.”

Taylor works her jaw, growing serious as she draws Sidney in for another hug. “You’re free now. _He_ will never decide what you can and cannot do again. I swear it.”

Sidney nods against her, holding on tight.

“Boss, what do you wanna do about Suttsy?”

Taylor sighs at Pascal’s interruption.

“I have to go take care of some things, and we need to bury one of my men.” She takes a step back from Sidney, nodding towards a man standing a little to the side, his gaze politely averted. “That’s Horny,” Taylor says. “He’ll help you get cleaned up and take care of _that_.”

She’s looking over Sidney’s shoulder, and when he turns to follow her gaze, he can see his sibling brides leaning out of the open door and window of the rig, peering at them cautiously. Beau is standing closest to them, and when Sidney glances back at his sister, he notices her eyes are locked firmly on Beau’s chastity belt, one side of her mouth curled up in disgust as she takes in the bulky contraption.

She drags her eyes back to Sidney, gaze dipping lightning quick to his bulging stomach.

“Horny’s good people, he’ll take care of you,” she says, and with a reassuring nod at Sidney follows Pascal to the other side of the rig, where Sidney can hear the others extract the dead man from the passenger seat.

Sidney watches them disappear, discomfited, stomach rolling as he realises someone died to keep him and his sibling brides safe, to help them escape Bettman’s clutches.

A hand settles on his shoulder, the touch light and gentle.

“Come on then,” Horny says. “It will probably be a little while before we can get the rig moving again. It needs a little tinkering before we can take off.” He smiles kindly at Sidney. “We should get you cleaned up in the meantime.”

He glances up at Beau, raising his voice as he nods at his chastity belt. “And take care of those.”

Beau doesn’t need any more incentive than that. He loses his previous cautiousness, jumping down from the cab and landing in the sand with a soft thud. He’s followed by an obviously eager Derrick, and at a more sedate pace, Olli and Nikky.

Beau meets Horny’s eyes.

“Get it off me.”

**

Watching Beau kick at his broken chastity belt and spit at it in derision is such a bizarre sight that Sidney can’t help the chuckles escaping him.

“Feels good, doesn’t it?” he asks, because he remembers being fitted for his own, how horrified and furious he had been at the unfairness of it all and then the massive relief when he got pregnant and Bettman decided a belt was no longer necessary for him.

Sidney had asked Flower to melt the damn thing in the forge the second it was off him.

Bettman had not allowed Beau the same reprieve.

“Hose me off,” is all Beau says, spitting at the belt one more time before walking over to where Sidney is holding a hose connected to the rig’s water source, running the gentle spray up and down his bared legs in an attempt to wash away the sand.

Sidney doesn’t think he’s ever been this dishevelled before, not since the time he lived in the valley, but he’ll happily spend the rest of his life in this state if it means being free of Bettman.

“Are we really safe now?” Nikky asks, joining them once Horny has cut off his belt. “Shouldn’t we be moving? The war boys are still after us, aren’t they?” He glances over Sidney’s shoulder, looking out at the vast desert as if expecting to see Bettman’s fleet descend on them at any time.

“They’re fixing the rig right now, Nikky, and then we’ll be on our way, I promise. We’re not going back. We’re not,” Sidney soothes him.

There’s enough conviction in his words that Nikky relaxes, his gaze moving to meet Sidney’s. He smiles at him hesitantly.

“We’re not going back?”

“Told you, didn’t I?” Derrick interjects, smiling serenely. He steps up next to them with Olli just a step behind, and slaps Nikky heartily on the back. “I’d rather die than stay another day in the Citadel.”

Beau rolls his eyes at him, and Sidney has to hide his smile. Derrick has always been strangely morbid. Sidney suspects it’s from all the reading he’s done; he’s become particularly fond of Poe during his frequent visits to Bettman’s vast library.

“It won’t come to that. No one is going to die.”

“You can’t make that promise, Sid. Out here, no one is safe.”

Sidney’s mouth tightens as Taylor walks up to them, her men following loyally behind. She looks regretful but unflinching.

“We will do our best to protect everyone, but we can’t make promises. Not with the road ahead of us. We’ve already buried one man, and I’ve lost two more.”

That’s three total, he realises, and spares a second to wonder who the third is.

“ _I_ am making promises,” Sidney says, because he will not yield on this. It might be foolish, might even be a lie in the end, but Sidney has had his every action dictated for a long, long time. He’s been locked up and contained, but no longer. He is making promises because he can and because he chooses to. He won’t allow anyone to remove that choice from him.

These boys are his sibling brides, the people who kept him sane through the abuse he suffered at Bettman’s hands; Sidney will see them come out on the other side of this alive if it is the last thing he does in this world.

He's not Bettman’s anymore, and neither are they.

“Sidney—”

“No.” He shakes his head, moving to step before his sibling brides in an effort to shield them from the others. “I promised. I promised them and I—” He breaks off, chest heaving with indignation and righteousness.

“I promised Mom. I promised we would find the village she’s from and I promised we would be free.” He holds Taylor’s eyes, and stands resolute. “I’m going to keep that promise.”

And because they were raised by the same woman, because they both know what this meant to her, Taylor says, “Okay.” She shakes her head, as if in disbelief. “Okay, but if you want to survive this thing, you _need_ to follow my orders.”

Sidney nods. “Deal.”

**

The rig is sturdier than the cars and fared better than the two bikes they lost in the storm.

Horny, the rider of the first bike, survived the ordeal, but Lappy, who’d driven the other one had not been so lucky; he’s the third loss in their caravan.

They hadn’t even found his body.

“Couldn’t he still be alive?” Derrick asks Flower curiously, watching as Pascal and Danny’s boys tinker with the rig’s engine.

Sidney glances at Flower, but has to look away at his grim face.

“Afraid not. Tanger and I found his bike. There wasn’t much left of it. Even if Lappy is still alive out there, he’d probably be dead by the time we found him, and even if we did, we don’t have the time or resources to save him.”

Sidney shivers. It’s the brutal truth of their reality.

“That’s so _cold_ ,” Derrick says, but he sounds fascinated, looking at Flower with wide, excited eyes. Next to him, Nikky eyes them warily.

Flower shrugs. “We’re war boys.”

He says it as if that’s all the explanation needed, and in a way it is.

Sidney is used to Flower, his friend and personal guard, the man who’s protected him for nearly a decade; he sometimes forgets that Flower is, at the root of it, a war boy. Tanger, too.

Normally, Taylor brings along an entourage of seven men when she takes out the war rig, all carefully chosen from her unit.

When they were making their plans to escape, Flower had explained that she’d only bring five of her own for this run, and that Flower and Tanger would take up the spots of the remaining two.

It was the only way to fit them all into the their party with the sudden addition of Danny and his boys.

Sidney had been nervous that someone would recognise Flower before they made it out of the Citadel, that they would see him and wonder where his charge was, but with the war boys’ uniform and the face paint, it is difficult to tell them all apart. Especially from a distance.

Sidney needn’t have worried. Not about Flower, anyway.

Taylor had brought along five of her men, and now only Pascal and Horny were left.

Three dead. Three too many.

Maybe he is cursed, Sidney wonders. The dead are piling up around him and Sidney can’t help but think it’s all his fault, that he’s the common denominator.

His parents, Taylor’s men. His child.

_Dead, dead, dead._

“Sidney? Are you feeling all right? You look a little pale.”

He lifts his head slowly, staring up at Danny with red-rimmed eyes.

Danny clucks his tongue disapprovingly. “You are dehydrated. You should drink some water. Nikky, help him, won’t you?”

Nikky nods dutifully, jumping up from his place in the sand to help Sidney to his feet, carefully guiding him around the side of the rig to where the hose is attached.

“Are you okay? Feeling sick?” Nikky asks worriedly as they draw away from the others. He eyes Sidney with obvious concern, eyes landing on his stomach for a second.

He’s going to be heartbroken, Sidney thinks, when he finds out about the baby. He’s been so excited about it. Nikky is a new addition to Bettman’s harem, not even two months into his new role as a bride. He’s been ripped apart from everything he’s ever known; it had been a comfort for him to latch onto Sidney’s pregnancy and the birth of the baby as something to look forward to, as something he could focus on instead of the miserable reality of what it meant to be one of Bettman’s brides.

“I’m fine,” Sidney mumbles tiredly. “Just a little thirsty.”

He leans against the side of the rig as Nikky works the hose, detaching it from the rig before adjusting the water pressure until it’s just a small trickle of cool water.

Sidney drinks greedily when Nikky passes him the hose, uncaring of the water that dribbles down his chin and splashes over the large baby bump. He feels better already, more awake and alert.

Which is why it is so strange, he thinks absently, that it takes him so long to react to the man staring at him incredulously, one hand clutched around the huge shotgun he’s got pointed straight at Sidney, and the other clamped down on an unconscious body stretched across his shoulders.

There is a long, thick metal chain binding them together.

The stranger is a terrifying sight. His shoulders are broad and most of his face is obscured by the muzzle trapped around his head. He looks unstable and wild, flighty, but the hand aiming the shotgun at Sidney is steady as anything.

Sidney swallows nervously, his eyes staring unblinkingly. He shifts his gaze, searching out the face of the man stretched across the stranger’s shoulders—and he is fairly certain that it is Claude, a war boy and friend of Danny’s. His boys idolise him. That must make the stranger Claude’s blood bag.

Danny isn’t going to like this, Sidney thinks.

He winces when the man dumps Claude carelessly to the ground, the sand doing little to soften the impact.

Nikky, who’s been standing with his back to the man, jumps and spins on his heel at the sudden thud, a startled meep escaping him as he takes in the newcomer.

“Sid—!”

“I see,” Sidney says softly, calm. Much calmer than he’s feeling.

He watches as the man’s eyes flicker frantically between the two of them before settling on the water still trickling out of the hose in Sidney’s hands. Sidney shuts it off carefully.

The man takes a step forward, the chain attached to the muzzle rattling with the movement.

“Water,” he grunts, the sound rough and guttural behind his mask. He waves the shotgun at them, grumbling in disapproval when Sidney attempts to lower the hose carefully to the ground.

“No. Come here,” the man orders.

Nikky shakes his head wildly, reaching out to grab at Sidney when he starts making his way towards the stranger. He’s only wearing one shoe, Sidney notices nonsensically.

“It’s all right. It’s okay,” he says, keeping his voice low and comforting, as much of an effort to soothe the stranger as it is Nikky. Sidney approaches him cautiously.

He holds out the hose, murmuring, “It’s okay, it’s okay,” under his breath, flinching when the stranger swipes out his left arm suddenly, roughly grabbing the hose out of Sidney’s hands.

Their eyes meet for what can’t be more than a second, but Sidney feels the moment stretch out as he looks into the stranger’s dark, dark eyes. They’re nearly black, they are so dark.

The stranger waves the shotgun again, indicating for Sidney to turn around.

Sidney turns to meet Nikky’s frightened gaze. He shakes his head minutely, warning him against alerting the others. They don’t know how the stranger will react, and Sidney would rather not startle him into using the shotgun.

He can hear the stranger’s frustrated grunts behind him before he manages to get the hose working one handed, and then the sounds of his throat gurgling as he guzzles the water.

It’s not delicate, the water splashing everywhere, and from the corner of his eye, Sidney thinks he can see Claude move tentatively in the sand.

It seems like forever before the stranger has drunk his fill, turning the hose off before dropping it to the ground.

Sidney dares to look at him over his shoulder, and when their eyes meet this time, the stranger takes in a deep breath, nostrils flaring as he picks up on where Sidney’s natural scent is hidden beneath the grime of sweat and sand.

“What are you?”

**

**GENO**

******

 

“What are you?” Geno asks, staring unblinkingly at the creature before him.

He’s half-convinced it’s a mirage, certain that something so beautiful, so stunningly flawless, cannot be real. Not even the scarred markings on his face detract from his beauty.

He breathes in again, savouring the heady scent.

Geno doesn’t know what he is, only that he is something _other_. Something Geno should know, but can’t quite put into words. He’s a different being than Geno, and yet they’re the same. It’s confusing. Like witchcraft.

Is the creature a witch?

Geno is almost certain he has never smelled anything like his scent before, knows for a fact that there is nothing so sweet and so tempting to be found in the vastness of the desert.

He wants to label it as foreign, a thoroughly unfamiliar scent, but someplace, deep in the recesses of his mind, he knows that isn’t true; he has vague, half-forgotten memories of a woman’s presence, loving and warm.

His mother, Geno remembers. Just barely.

The witch’s scent reminds him of his mother, though it is somehow heady and tempting where his mother’s had been loving and comforting. Geno can’t imagine he’d ever reacted like this to his mother.

He’s so confused.

“Sid?” the boy by the rig asks hesitantly.

Geno’s eyes slip to him, lightning quick. He’s tall. Taller than Geno.

“It’s okay,” the witch says again, turning his head to look back at his companion. _Sid_ , the boy had called him.

“It’s okay, Nikky. Everything is okay.”

It’s a useless lie. Geno has a shotgun trained on him, and while he knows there is sand clogging the bullet chamber, the witch does not; his fast, shallow breathing tells Geno exactly how scared he is.

The boy relaxes at his words anyway, calming at the witch’s low, comforting words.

“It’s okay, we’re not going back. I’m not going back. We’re okay.” The witch says it like a mantra, chanting the same words over and over again.

Geno’s lids grow heavy at the sound of the soothing voice, his shoulders relaxing even as he fails to grasp the significance of the words. He feels calm, much calmer than he should be with a war boy at his feet and the buzzing sound of conversation and the clanking of an engine on the other side of the rig, shielded from view, but there.

There must be five, six, people. Maybe more. They’ll discover him at any time now; they’ll pick up on their companions’ fear and come running.

_Danger, danger._

Then there are the creatures before him. Geno has been thinking of one as a witch, but he doesn’t know about the tall one. They both look like him, but he _knows_ they are _other_.

He can barely pick up on the boy’s scent; it’s similar to the witch before him, though not nearly as sweet or intoxicating.

He growls in annoyance, shaking his head to get rid of the sudden fog clouding his mind; there are voices inside his head, one accusing the witch of dark magic, of deception and _danger, danger—_

The other voice is whispering frantically, urging him to stand down, that the witch is not to be hurt; _he’s special. Precious. He’s an ome—_

Geno growls again.

_Danger, danger, danger._

“What are you?” he demands, angry now—scared _. He’s special, he’s special, he’s spe—_

“What do you think he is, blood bag?”

Geno grunts as his head is yanked back painfully and his feet are swept from underneath him. He falls hard on his back, the shotgun slipping out of his hand and into the sand.

He hears the war boy move in the sand before a weight settles on top of his chest, and Geno roars, finding purchase with his feet to buck the war boy off him with a punch to his face.

The war boy howls in pain and clutches at his nose. He topples to one side as Geno scrambles to get to his feet, hand desperately searching out the shotgun in the sand, straightening just in time to have it aimed at the pretty witch again as the others are finally alerted to the commotion and come running from the other side of the rig.

“Sidney!”

“Who the fuck is that?”

“ _Claude_?” a child’s voice says incredulously, making to run towards the war boy before a man, his father, Geno thinks, reaches out and grabs him around the waist.

“Cameron.”

“Let me go!” the boy cries out, struggling against his father’s hold.

Geno catches sight of his face and thinks he might be older than what he’d previously thought. A teen, maybe. It’s hard to tell. It’s been so long since he’s seen children. And they’re skinny. They’re all so very skinny.

His eyes slip back to the one he’s got lined up with the shotgun; his gaze dips to rest on his stomach.

That one is not so skinny, but it is not a surplus of fat he carries. Geno inhales deeply.

It’s life.

He tilts his head, eyes narrowing as he takes in another deep breath. What had been life, he amends mentally.

“Dead,” he says before he can stop himself, looking at the witch intently. Geno has been alone for a very long time, he’s survived the cruelty of the desert on his own for more than a decade. His senses are stronger than most, and he can smell the rot tangled within the witch’s scent. It’s faint, so faint Geno hadn’t even picked up on it at first, but as he watches the witch stiffen in response to that single word, he knows he is right.

There is death inside of him.

He catches movement to his side and has just enough time to prepare himself as the war boy lurches at the chain again. Geno grunts, shifting his feet wide apart to brace himself against the force of the tug while still managing to keep the shotgun aimed firmly at the witch in front of him.

“Stop or I’ll shoot,” he barks at the war boy, and the witch says, “No, you won’t.”

His voice is so quiet only Geno hears.

He tightens his fingers on the gun, but keeps his eyes on the war boy despite how much he wants to glower at the witch, to tell him to shut up, to keep his dark magic to himself.

Geno has survived the desert long enough to learn that everything out here is deadly; the prettier something is, the more deadlier it gets.

_Danger, danger._

The war boy freezes in place, sending a quick look at the witch. His lips curl up to one side in disgust, and he must not like the witch very much, but he seems unwilling to let any harm come to him.

Geno’s got leverage now.

“Over there. Careful.” He motions for the war boy to step up next to the witch, wincing inwardly as the chain binding them together rattles and twists with the movement, brushing against the side of his muzzle. It’s stretched wide between them, a heavy pressure at the back of Geno’s skull.

The war boy has to reach out with his hand to give the chain more length to work with.

Geno considers them all for a second. He takes in the war boy, and the witch next to him, and then the group of people standing behind them. They’re all on edge. All of them dangerous.

His mind races as he catches sight of the open door to the driver’s seat of the rig, and then the car a little off to the side. It’s much smaller, much easier to navigate the desert with. He needs keys, and to get out of the muzzle.

He needs someone to cut the chain.

“You. The boy. You have tools? Something to cut the chain?”

The teen wrenches out of his father’s arms, calmer now that the war boy is no longer howling in pain.

“We have a chain cutter. You’ll leave if we cut the chain for you?”

“Cameron,” the boy’s father protests, but the teen ignores him.

“You’ll leave without hurting anyone, right? We’ll cut the chain and you’ll leave?”

Geno grunts his acknowledgement, saying nothing of his intention to take the car.

Not that it matters. The female is eyeing the vehicle with deeply furrowed brows. She already knows it’s his best getaway.

“Cameron,” the witch calls out. He keeps his eyes on Geno. “Will you get something to help him out of the muzzle as well?”

Geno is immediately suspicious; he aims the gun a little more firmly, growling low in the back of his throat. Why would the witch help him? What trickery is this?

“Sid? What are you doing?”

Geno doesn’t dare take his eyes off the witch lest he be deceived by his dark magic— _he’s special, so special_ —but he can hear the incredulity in the female’s voice just fine.

“We’re not monsters, Taylor,” the witch says firmly. “No one should be locked behind a cage like that.”

Such pretty words, Geno thinks. _Danger, danger._

He can feel something like fear crawl up his spine, is getting a headache from the voices screaming inside his mind, contradicting each other with every word.

(He’s special, so special— _Danger, danger._ )

It’s too much; a sensory overload. He tries to take a deep breath to clear the fog settling over him, but it only makes it worse when he gets a lungful of the witch’s scent, sweet and strong.

“It’s okay,” the witch says. His voice is so soothing; Geno relaxes at the sound of it despite himself.

“It’s okay. You’ve lost a lot of blood, and you must still be thirsty.”

He takes a cautious step forward, and Geno holds his ground, arm steady and fingers sure around the trigger.

He thinks, for a wild second, that the witch knows. He knows the bullet chamber is jammed and Geno cannot harm him, but what he says is, “You are not going to shoot me, are you?” He asks as if it’s a question, but it is not, because the witch has figured out the truth of him.

If Geno ever meant to do him harm, he would have done so already.

He just lost his leverage.

The witch reaches out with one hand, slowly, so, so slow before he curls his fingers around the barrel of the shotgun, pushing with a bare minimum to get Geno to lower the weapon until it’s pointing uselessly at the sand.

Geno couldn’t look away from him even if he wanted to. He is trapped in place by those hazel eyes, and doesn’t see the figure coming at him until it’s too late.

He goes toppling backwards into the sand, the shotgun wrenched out of his hand by strong hands, and is just barely sensible to the pained grunt the war boy lets slip as he is forced forward by the tug of the chain.

“Claude!” the boy, Cameron, calls out again.

Geno feels as if he is somewhere else entirely when the shotgun is suddenly aimed at him. He hears, “Flower! No!” before the man pinning him to the sand pulls the trigger and the release sparks uselessly.

There is a moment of tense silence.

“Duper,” the female barks out, and suddenly they all burst into action.

The teens and the sweet-scented ones are herded into the rig as Geno is surrounded by more men with functional guns, though the witch and the tall one remain, resisting when one of the men tries to tug them away.

The tall one won’t go without the witch, and the witch—

“Don’t hurt him,” he says, falling awkwardly to his knees by Geno’s side. He’s hindered somewhat by his large stomach.

The female stalks up to them, standing over Geno and looking down at him with a ferocious sneer. She huffs impatiently.

“He was going to take the car, Sid, and he probably would have killed someone in the process. We can’t just let him go.”

“Maybe he would have taken the car,” the witch acknowledges, “but we can’t know that for sure, and no one should be punished for a crime they have yet to commit. We’re not savages, not like Bettman.” He casts his eyes to Geno, meeting his startled gaze. “Besides, I don’t think he would have hurt me.”

He doesn’t sound entirely convinced of it, but still he refuses to let them hurt Geno.

Geno doesn’t understand him at all. He can’t make sense of him.

“What are you?” he asks again, disregarding the danger the others pose as he stares up at the witch. He has to know what he is. Geno has been thinking witch all this time, but now he’s not so sure. His finely-tuned senses—honed over years of roaming the desert—are going haywire because of him; Geno doesn’t understand why.

One side of him is screaming out in alarm— _danger, danger—_ but another part of him can’t let go of his scent, of the wide hazel eyes and the voice inside his head saying, _he’s special_.

“My name is Sidney. I’m an omega.”

The word means nothing and everything— _You’re an alpha, my son. One day, you will find an omega like me and you will have children of your own—_

“I don’t—”

“Is he an idiot?” the war boy asks, sounding more curious than insulting, and this has to be the most absurd standoff Geno has ever been part of.

“How can he not know what an omega is? He’s an alpha, isn’t he?”

The female cocks her head as she looks Geno over with calm, calculating eyes. She seems less murderous now that no one appears to be in any immediate danger.

“He’s an alpha,” she says, nodding decisively. She scowls a second later. “We don’t have time for this. We lost Bettman’s fleet in the storm, but they’ll pick up our trail soon enough. We’ve been immobile too long as it is.”

“Let’s go then. We’ll bring this one with us,” Sid, _Sidney_ , says—not a witch after all.

Sidney climbs to his feet with a helping hand from the tall one.

Sidney had called him Nikky. He’s staring at Geno with wide, curious eyes, not so frightened anymore. His eyes are fastened on the side of Geno’s neck, where the collar of his shirt has been torn in the scuffle; Geno glares at him until he averts his eyes.

The female snorts disbelievingly. “We’re not bringing him with us.” The, _are you insane?_ is left unsaid but heavily implied.

Geno grunts his agreement.

Sidney shrugs. “We’re obviously not giving him the car, and we can’t leave him here for Bettman to pick up. They’ll kill him.”

“Not our problem, Sid.”

“I’m _making_ it our problem. He’s coming.”

They stare at each other, both of them unmoving.

She shouldn’t—she’s young but obviously in charge—but finally the female caves. She stalks up to Sidney, leaning in close as she growls, “If he kills anyone, know that that’s on you.”

Sidney doesn’t falter. “Understood,” he says.

The female shakes her head, incredulous, but she has a job to do and little time to do it—she is right when she says Bettman will pick up their trail, and soon.

Geno would have taken the car and left already if it weren’t for Sidney and the war boy; they’re still chained together.

“We’re moving,” the female says. “Duper? Is the engine set?”

“Good to go, boss!”

“Good.” She nods, satisfied. “Horny, go with Duper. Take the kids with you. Flower, I want you in the cab with me; Tanger, you are on the roof. Danny, I’m gonna need you in the rig.”

She spares a look at the war boy, crumbled in the sand next to Geno. “What do you want to do with this one?” she asks, her lip curling in annoyance.

The man she called Danny frowns. “I’d like to bring him with us. He needs medical attention.” He looks disapprovingly at the war boy’s bloodied nose and pale pallor.

There’s a fresh scar travelling up the length of his torso as well. It looks inflamed, is probably infected; Geno had gotten a good look at it when he’d been strung up as the war boy’s blood bag.

“You’re still recovering, Claude. What were you thinking, charging ahead like this?”

The war boy shrugs carelessly at the reprimand, lifting an arm to scratch awkwardly at his neck. It rattles the chain between them.

“Jake said you and the boys were missing, that you were on the rig. Wasn’t about to let you go off on your own.”

Geno sends him a sharp look. He’d been wondering.

The war boy was part of Bettman’s fleet and had worked seamlessly with his partner before the lancer’s untimely death, but Geno is sure he’d seen the war boy self-sabotage earlier. It hadn’t made sense at the time, and Geno had been so busy trying to survive and preventing them all from blowing into pieces, but now that he’s thinking about it, the flare the war boy would have used as ignition for the fuel filling his vehicle had never been lit.

It was all a show for his lancer.

Then the rig had crashed into them and the war boy’s lancer had been devoured by the sandstorm along with his car. Nothing mattered after that.

Dead is dead.

**

Once she decides to get on the road, the female is quick about it, sending the car ahead with the rig following shortly.

Geno is not sure what is happening. He can’t think straight with Sidney so close to him, unused to the sweet, tangy smell, and the barest hint of rot, still there underneath his alluring scent.

Omega scent.

He lets them bind his hands in front of him— _is that really necessary?_ Sidney asks _—_ and follows, docile enough as they guide Geno and the war boy into the rig, the tall one and Sidney just a step behind.

Geno doesn’t understand their fascination with him.

The female is smart; she’s seen battle, she realises the threat Geno is. She keeps eyeing him distrustfully, shaking her head in disbelief every time she catches sight of him in the rearview mirror. She keeps narrowing her eyes at his proximity to Sidney.

As if Geno has anything to say about it.

He doesn’t get it; Sidney plants himself next to Geno in the backseat of the cab and refuses to be moved every time someone suggests he hide with the other omegas in what Geno is baffled to learn is a secret hold beneath their feet.

The tall one is on his other side, keeping quiet but staring unnervingly at the side of Geno’s neck.

Geno doesn’t fool himself. He’s grateful they cut the chain linking him to the war boy and managed to break the lock to his muzzle, but he is their prisoner, hands still bound before him and alive only by the grace of Sidney, whose word seems to carry weight with the female.

Geno thinks they must be siblings. He can see the similarities between them even without being close enough to breathe in the faint trace of a shared familial accent in their scents—he thinks that’s why she’s listening to him even though she’s obviously in charge.

Sidney is her older brother.

“How did you end up as Claude’s blood bag?”

Claude. The war boy.

He’d been herded into the hold by the doctor, Danny, saying something about setting his nose.

Geno hopes it hurts.

“What’s your name, then?” Sidney asks when Geno remains stubbornly silent. He’s staring at him intently, eyes roving curiously over Geno’s uncovered face.

“Where were you born?”

Geno blinks, and even Sidney looks surprised by the tall one’s outburst.

“Nikky?” Sidney asks wonderingly.

Nikky blushes under their scrutiny, but he doesn’t tear his eyes away from Geno’s neck. He lifts a hand, hesitantly stroking his fingers over the tattoo exposed by the broken collar of Geno's sweater.

Geno growls and just barely manages to keep still.

“Nikky! The fuck are you doing? He’s dangerous.”

“Flower!” Sidney snaps. He glares disapprovingly at the man in the passenger seat.

Flower is turned around towards them, glowering at Geno.

Sidney asks, “Why are you being like this? He hasn’t done anything wrong—”

“We don’t know anything about him, Sid!” Flower says. He side eyes the female, wilting a little under the ferocious sneer she turns on him. “Who knows what he’s capable of? We should never have brought him along.”

“Actually,” Nikky starts to say, “I think we know one thing about him.” He nods his head at the tattoo, withdrawing his fingers to draw up the flimsy material covering his bicep, revealing a large tattoo of his own.

Geno is startled to realise how similar it is to the one he’s got tattooed on his neck.

“I think we’re from the same village.”

**

Geno doesn’t remember all that much about his childhood or the place he came from. Only general things, like the sound of people bustling around the village, painstaking lessons on desert plants—knowledge that Geno is forever grateful for; it’s ensured his survival these past ten years—and the feeling of home and family.

He doesn’t remember faces anymore. Not his father’s or his brother’s. Not his mother’s.

He does remember the screams. He remembers the village burning and the flashes of colour as people ran for their lives, trying to escape the flames and the attacking forces of the war tribe invading their home.

Geno has always thought he was the only survivor, that when the nomads who found him and accepted him into their midst came across the wreckage of the village, there was nothing else but ash and the dying embers of the fire and Geno, but—

_Run. Run for your lives!_

People had fled the village and braved the desert. Was it possible they had made a successful escape? Without food, without water? Without any supplies to aid their survival?

His mind gets stuck on the thought, on the idea that he’s maybe not so alone as he’s believed himself to be all these years.

It’s easy to get lost in it, seduced by the tempting thought even through the distraction that is Sidney, pressed close to his side with his heady, alluring scent continuously teasing Geno’s nostrils.

Geno doesn’t know what to make of him, of someone he’s held at gunpoint but who seems not to blame him and is protecting him instead.

Anywhere else, any _one_ else, and Geno would have been more than a little wary. He would have been outright hostile, distrustful of the easy forgiveness and looking for signs of duplicity, for the moment where Sidney would drop the act and turn on him. Would stab him in the back.

Geno has pointed a gun at him, threatened him. He could be a heartless killer for all Sidney knows and still he won’t be moved from Geno’s side; he won’t let anyone hurt him either, is still trying to convince the female—Taylor, Geno learns—to remove the rope binding his wrists together.

It doesn’t make sense, and his scent— _he’s special, so special—_ doesn’t help his confusion. Makes it worse, if anything.

Geno ignores him. Tries to. He ignores the voices around him and the faint thread of conversation from down in the hold—and the unnerving stare of the tall one on his other side. Nikky. It’s obviously a nickname. It has to be, like Geno.

Geno wonders if Nikky’s birth name is anything like his own. He wonders if they really had come from the same village. The people there had all been of Slavic descent; the small patch of territory that became their village had been settled by refugees from the Old Country.

Geno doesn’t remember much from his childhood, but he remembers this: his people had been fiercely proud of their heritage and history. They had held on to their culture and traditions even after the mass emigrations out of Russia, fleeing their homes and crossing the Continent as the Cold War thawed to dangerous temperatures and people on both sides were killed off in massive numbers.

It seems impossible, but if there is even the slightest chance that they’re still out there, Geno wants to find his people. He _needs_ to find them.

“Hey, are you okay?”

He startles when he feels soft fingers pry his clenched fists open, letting go of thoughts of times gone by as he looks down at his lap to see Sidney firmly uncurl one finger after the other.

“You were hurting yourself,” Sidney says, his tone strangely scolding as he eyes the deep grooves in Geno’s palms, the work of his square, blunt nails.

Geno jerks his hands back and Sidney sighs longsufferingly. It’s an easy gesture, familiar, as if they’ve known each other all their lives and this is an everyday occurrence and not the short couple of hours it’s been since Geno aimed a shotgun at him and Sidney said, _You’re not going to shoot me, are you?_

Sidney looks up and meets Geno’s eyes steadily as he reaches for his hands again. He strokes his fingers over the grooves in Geno’s palms, soothing the hurt.

Geno stares at him. He smells that same hint of rot and the overwhelming sweetness from before. He can’t help the question that slips out. “What does omega mean?”

The cab falls silent. Even the faint buzz of conversation from down in the hold ceases.

Geno sets his jaw and starts grinding his teeth. He is forcibly reminded of his dismal reality as he becomes their sole focus once again.

— _danger, danger_ —

He’s a prisoner here, and all but Sidney, and maybe Nikky, would like to see him dead.

He meets Taylor’s eyes in the rearview mirror; she’s looking at him as if he’s something dangerous, something she doesn’t trust. She looks as if she doesn’t buy his ignorance.

If nothing else, Geno respects her caution.

“What kind of alpha doesn’t know what an omega is?” she asks.

Geno shrugs his shoulders and holds her gaze.

“Someone who’s never met one before,” Sidney speaks up from Geno’s side. He lets his fingers fall away from Geno’s hands.

Geno has to hold back a whine of protest, hating himself for missing that soft touch already.

“Or doesn’t remember it,” Sidney continues, and when Geno turns to look at him, breathing in deeply as their eyes meet, his nostrils flaring on the foreign scent, Sidney’s eyes look so, so green.

They had been brown before, Geno thinks. He's sure of it. He tilts his head, trying to see what other colours he can find inside those wide, pretty eyes.

Sidney flushes under his scrutiny and offers up a quick half smile. His generous mouth stretches crookedly to one side.

Geno hates how beautiful he is.

Flower coughs obnoxiously, dispelling the moment between them as he sends Geno a warning glare when he finally tears his eyes away from Sidney and deigns to look at Flower.

Geno lifts his brows, unimpressed.

“Boss!”

Their silent standoff is interrupted by the walkie-talkie on the dashboard of the cab. It looks old and damaged, crackling with static and the distorted voice of one of the war boys from the car ahead of them. Geno watches with keen eyes as Taylor grabs the device, pushing a button before putting it close to her mouth.

“Duper. What’s happening?”

“Boss, there’s a scout from the Canyon Dwellers up ahead. She says they’ve caught sight of three war parties following us. Bettman’s called reinforcements. They’re close.”

Taylor curses viciously under her breath. “He must have sent word to Bullet Farm and Gas Town. Shit.”

“Boss,” Flower says, dragging his narrowed eyes away from Geno before turning to look at Taylor instead. “We can’t outpace them. Not with the pod slowing us down. We gotta unhook it. That much guzzoline will give them something to bicker about. No way Bullet Farm will chase us if they can get their hands on the guzzoline.”

Taylor curses again, but she’s smart. She sees the logic in Flower’s words.

Good. Geno grunts in satisfaction when she radios the car ahead with orders to pass on a message to the scout: _deal is still on_.

Geno has done business with the Canyon Dwellers before. Cookie is a shady fuck, but he honours his agreements—from the patches of conversation he’s managed to pick up on throughout the drive, Taylor has made a deal with Cookie for safe passage through the canyon. It leads into the Great Wastelands; a vast piece of territory outside of even Bettman’s grasp.

It’s a good deal. Cookie may be shady but he’s not needlessly violent, and he has a small army of vehicles to keep afloat. He will let them pass safely and with little trouble if it means getting his hands on some precious guzzoline—or so Geno hopes.

He catches Sidney peering at him curiously from the corner of his eye, and very carefully does not pause to think why he’s so concerned for their safety all of a sudden. He doesn’t ask himself why he’s not plotting his own escape.

Cookie owes him one. He’d help if Geno gave any indication he needed it.

“What are you thinking about?”

There is a soft rasp to Sidney voice and a curious lilt to his tone, as if what he is really asking is, _What will you do?_

When Geno looks at him, unable to keep his eyes off him any longer, he knows that escape is no longer an option. He’s not sure it ever was.

He can’t abandon Sidney, isn’t even sure why, only that he won’t.

Taylor and Flower think he is their captive, but it is Sidney who is his jailor.

Sidney just doesn’t know it yet.

**

While Geno has had a few dealings with Cookie previously, it’s been mostly away from his homebase, and this will make only the second time Geno has been to the home of the Canyon Dwellers. It’s at the very edge of known ‘civilization’, of the land Bettman claims as his own; there is little occasion for anyone to delve further than this territory.

There is only the Wastelands beyond. The Wastelands and certain, inevitable death.

Taylor becomes increasingly uneasy the closer they get, visibly so; she has called the one named Tanger off the roof and into the hold with orders to protect the brides and the doctor—with his life if need be.

Even Flower has quieted in his seat. He is sitting upright, head turned towards the passenger window, and his keen eyes scan the dips and uneven curves in the canyon for any sign of danger.

Only Sidney and Geno are in the backseat now, Taylor having ordered Nikky into the hold along with Tanger. Nikky hadn’t wanted to leave Sidney’s side, but Taylor had threatened to throw him off the rig if he didn’t do as she said.

Geno half thinks she’d have done it too.

When the rig finally rolls to a stop, Sidney is tense beside him, one hand gripping tight to the inside of Geno’s thigh.

Geno doesn’t think he realises. Sidney is too busy staring out the window, his breath coming out in short, quick pants. He’s worried, and Geno doesn’t like it.

Outside is completely silent, no sign of movement anywhere.

It won’t last. Geno knows it won’t. He knows Cookie, and while he’s not one for violence usually, he doesn’t shy away from it. If Cookie spooks and gets trigger happy, they’re going to need as many free hands as possible.

“Cut the rope,” Geno says. His voice is little more than a low growl in the uneasy quiet. “Cut the rope and give me a gun.”

Flower swivels around to look at him incredulously, his mouth open on a protest.

He never gets a chance to speak. Taylor says, “Do it,” nodding at Flower and looking at where Sidney’s hand is gripping tight to Geno’s thigh through the rearview mirror.

Flower sets his jaw, looking pained at the command, but he complies silently, cutting the rope around Geno’s hands without much fuss.

The second his wrists are free, Geno is pushing Sidney to the floor between the seats, mindful of his large stomach as he says, “Get the hell away from the window.”

Sidney's too exposed, an easy target for the snipers Geno knows Cookie has hidden somewhere in the canyon. His heart is pounding inside his ribcage as he drags Sidney away from the potential danger.

Sidney blinks at him, visibly stunned by the sudden manhandling, and his lashes flutter wildly as Geno helps ease him onto the floor.

“You’ve been here before,” Taylor says, not so much an accusation as a statement of facts. She is turned around in her seat to look at him, sending her brother a quick glance before her eyes settle back on Geno. She stares at him hard.

“Yes.”

Taylor nods, unsurprised. “Protect him,” she says, and when she leans over to press the handle of a gun against Geno’s palm, she adds, “no matter what.”

Geno nods gravely, and something quick and unspoken falls between them as Taylor turns away from him. Something like trust.

“Flower,” Taylor barks. Her voice is as firm and unyielding as steel. “You’re at the wheel. Be ready to go at my signal. Might have to make a quick escape if things go to shit.” She opens the door and jumps out of the rig before Flower can get in a word edgewise, completely unarmed, her gun now in Geno’s custody.

Geno is not sure if that makes her very brave or very stupid. Both, probably, he thinks, and can’t help but admire her anyway.

“Taylor!” Sidney hisses after her, but his voice doesn’t carry far enough even in the quiet, and Taylor is rapidly moving out of earshot as she stalks to the front of where Duper has parked the car a few metres ahead of the rig.

“Merde,” Flower mutters under his breath as he scrambles across the console to get to the driver’s seat. Geno doesn’t recognise the word, but the tone is familiar enough. He knows a swear when he hears one.

Over his shoulder, Geno can see Taylor talking to Duper.

“Fucking alphas and their harebrained schemes,” Flower continues, and Geno looks at him sharply.

There is that word again. Alpha. They had called him that.

An alpha to Sidney’s omega.

 _—special, so special_ —

Gradually, Geno is beginning to understand the significance of that.

Taylor’s voice shouting for Cookie has him focusing back at the task at hand, and Geno just barely refrains from groaning aloud.

Is she completely insane?

“I have your guzzoline,” she’s saying. “All three thousand gallons of it, just like you asked. Do we still have a deal?”

Cookie would shoot her where she stands if the deal were off, but waiting around is a mistake. She should already be unhitching the pod. If they need to make a quick getaway, Cookie will be far more concerned with securing the guzzoline and keep Bettman from reclaiming it than follow them.

Leaving the pod attached to the rig is giving him a reason to pursue.

“My scout tells me there is an entire fleet nipping at your heels. No less than _three_ war parties. They are not far behind and will be here soon.” Cookie appears on a plateau on the canyon, bleeding out of the shadows as if he were a part of them.

Even from inside the cab, Geno can see him glaring down at Taylor.

“That was _not_ part of the deal.” Cookie’s voice goes cold and dangerous as he adds, “You have brought a war fleet to my door. Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you where you stand.”

Taylor sneers up at him but says nothing. There is nothing she _can_ say. Nothing that will convince Cookie they’re worth the trouble of accepting the guzzoline and letting them pass. Not when he knows Bettman is likely to leave the guzzoline be as long as he gets what he wants.

Which means Cookie gets what _he_ wants. Or so he thinks.

They’re running out of time, and Geno needs only one glance at Sidney, taking in the way he’s worrying his bottom lip between his teeth, his eyes pleading for something, anything to help his sister—and Geno is rolling down the window and shouting at Cookie up in the canyon before he’s even thought it through.

“Cookie, you bastard. Don’t shoot!”

Geno can feel the heavy weight of Sidney’s stunned stare on him, and in the front seat of the cab, Flower hisses out, “What the hell are you doing? Shut the fuck up!”

Geno ignores him. He sticks his head out of the window, squinting against the bright glare of the sun as he tries to single out Cookie from where his minions have appeared beside him.

“ _Geno?_ ” Cookie asks incredulously. “Is that you? What the hell are you doing here?” There’s a brief pause. “What the hell are you doing with _them_?”

“Geno,” Sidney says, and the sound of his name from that soft voice has Geno looking back at him almost without his consent. He’s helpless to do anything but hold his gaze, staring into his pretty eyes when Sidney repeats, “Geno. That’s your name?”

“Nickname,” Geno corrects before he can think better of it.

“Geno! You still there?”

He manages to tear his eyes away from Sidney at Cookie’s holler, sticking his head back out of the window. “I’m here.”

He catches Taylor looking at him, her face set into an unreadable mask. Geno bets she’s already thinking of ways to take advantage of the situation. Smart woman.

“Well. This is...unexpected.”

“Take the guzzoline,” Geno says, ignoring Cookie’s wary grumble. “You said it yourself; the fleet will be here soon. Could get messy.”

“Is that a threat, Geno?”

“An observation.”

There’s a second of tense silence, and Geno is discreetly removing the safety of his gun when Cookie’s laugh suddenly rings out. It’s as loud and careless as Geno remembers. Crazy bastard.

“Seems you have taken a liking to your new friends, Geno. Tell me, do you still carry good will for your old ones?”

Geno has no friends, but he knows better than to point that out. “You tell me, Cookie. You’re the one who owes me a favour.”

“So I do,” Cookie says thoughtfully, just as Taylor loses her patience. She’s as on edge as Geno, keenly aware of the time slipping away from them.

“Enough! We don’t have time for this. Do you want the guzzoline or not?”

He obviously does, he’d be a fool not to, but Cookie still hesitates.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Geno calls out before Cookie gets the chance to change his mind. “You’re thinking you could keep us here, wait for Bettman to catch up and let him deal with us while you take off with the guzzoline.”

Cookie twitches, and Geno knows he’s right.

“And maybe Bettman doesn’t care, but you really think Bullet Farm and Gas Town are just going to let you walk off with three thousand gallons of guzzoline?” Geno summons up a smirk to hide how tense he really is. “Could get messy,” he says again.

“Fuck it.” Cookie turns to his men, barking out a few orders that has some of them gearing up their bikes, descending the hills down into the valley. “Unhitch the pod,” Cookie says. He grumbles under his breath for a second, no doubt cursing up a storm. “This means we’re even, Geno. I’ve paid my debt.”

Geno gives a tight nod of acknowledgement in his direction as Taylor stalks down the length of the rig, wasting no time in detaching the pod. She’s already made her way back to the cab when Cookie’s people reaches the pod; she tears open the door to the driver’s side, growling at Flower to get the hell out of her seat.

While Flower explodes into a flurry of movement, scurrying back into the passenger seat, Geno sticks his head back inside, rolling up the window and glaring at Sidney when it looks as if he’s thinking of moving up from the floor.

“Don’t move!” he barks at him, knowing they’re not out of the snipers’ aim until they’ve made it out of the canyon and into the Wastelands—Cookie has decided to let them go for now, but Geno wouldn’t put it against him to change his mind, especially knowing that Bettman’s people could catch up to them at any time.

He would very much like to have Sidney out of sight if they do.

Geno is no fool. He’s managed to pick up on bits and pieces along the drive. Bettman wants to reclaim all his brides and to punish those who took them from him, but it’s Sidney he really wants.

Sidney, and whatever it is that is hidden inside of him, smelling faintly of rot and death.

“Geno,” Sidney whispers urgently. He’s staring at Geno wide-eyed, his pupils dilated with fear.

Taylor already has the rig moving, following Duper’s lead out of the canyon, and behind them, echoing loudly through the valley, is the unmistakable sound of an electric guitar—the music precludes the arrival of Bettman’s fleet, like the war drums of ancient times.

“They’re here,” Flower says, and then, “Drive!”

Taylor snarls at him. “Don’t tell me what to do,” she grits out, but she’s flooring the gas, motor rumbling as the rig lurches to full speed, and when Geno looks over his shoulder, he can see Cookie signalling to his men.

Half a second later, an explosion goes off, and the narrow opening into the Canyon Dweller’s territory caves in, rocks tumbling off the cliffside and smothering some of Bettman’s people underneath.

That clever bastard.

Geno should have known Cookie would have the place booby trapped.

This should give them enough time to get away, he thinks, just as a shot rings out, bullet ricocheting off the cab.

Or maybe not.

Taylor veers sharply to the left as more bullets are fired at them, never letting the rig lose speed as she follows in Duper’s tracks.

“Don’t move,” Geno orders Sidney again, keeping his own head down as he works to get the window open. Another shot rings out, shattering the side mirror on the driver’s side. It has Taylor cursing violently, and Geno waits just long enough to make sure she’s not been hit before he leans out of the window, lining up a shot of his own and firing at the war boys in pursuit.

They’re all on motorcycles; they must have slipped through the valley before the explosion went off, escaping the cave-in with the speed of their bikes.

“Excellent shot,” Sidney praises when Geno has emptied his bullet chamber, managing to take out two of the four bikes in the process. He’s reaching out for another magazine to reload the gun when he catches sight of Sidney.

“Are you crazy? Get _down_.”

Sidney sighs from where he’s climbed back onto the seat next to him, and has the audacity to roll his eyes, as if Geno’s concern is completely unfounded.

Geno despairs; he feels it won’t be the first time.

“Get down!” he exclaims, and has to throw himself over Sidney to cover him when a bullet sizzles through the rear window of the cab and lodges itself into the walkie-talkie.

The old thing shatters, sending splinters everywhere.

“Shit!” Taylor flings herself to the side to avoid a splintering piece off the dashboard. “Are we all okay? And for fuck’s sake, Sid, get the hell away from the windows.”

Geno doesn’t give Sidney time to protest. He pushes him back to the floor, reaching over to open the hatch to the hold.

“Sorry, friend,” Tanger says when he sees him. His eyes shift to rest on Sidney, and he shakes his head at them, clearly anticipating what Geno intends. “Not enough room down here. He’ll have to stay in the cab.”

Geno takes a moment to swear in the Old Language, the Slavic words falling easily from his tongue.

He barely waits for Tanger to duck his head back into the hold before he slams the hatch into place. He turns to glower at Sidney, glaring at him as he slams the magazine into the bullet chamber, just daring him to move from his spot on the floor.

They look at each other, a brief moment of only seconds stretching into an eternity and somehow not long enough. Geno shifts uncomfortably, his skin prickling with a sudden restlessness as he holds Sidney’s gaze. He feels as if an entire lifetime passes between them in that one single moment.

Finally, Sidney smiles at him.

“I’ll stay put,” he promises.

Geno exhales, breathing a little easier than he had just a second ago. “Good,” he grunts in approval, only to lift his gun a second later, shooting the war boy trying to climb in the open window.

The bullet hits him square in the chest, and the war boy goes flying backwards, cackling all the while. The rig lurches a little on the left, and Geno winces, realising the war boy must have gone under the wheels.

“Where the hell did he come from?” Geno asks.

“The roof,” Taylor yells out. “They’re scaling the rig from behind.”

Flower rolls down the window of the passenger side. “I’m on it,” he says, swinging out of his seat and grabbing his own gun before slithering out the window.

Geno watches him disappear in disbelief, amazed that he manages not to fall off as he scales the cab; Taylor’s not a particularly gentle driver.

“You. Geno. Cover him.”

Geno shifts his gaze to Taylor, meeting her eyes in the rearview mirror. “What the hell do you expect me to do?” he demands.

He doesn’t have Flower’s apparent flexibility, and he’s not about to get himself killed playing hero to a bunch of renegades who would have seen him killed if it wasn’t for—

“Please,” Sidney says urgently. “Please help him. He’s my friend.”

Geno growls. Fucking hell.

“You owe me,” he grits out, not sure if he’s talking to Sidney or Taylor, not sure that it matters. He doesn’t allow himself to think about it, just knows that he can’t deny Sidney, not when he’d looked at him so imploringly and said, _Please._

He stashes his gun into the back of his pants before climbing out of the still open window, arms straining with the effort to cling on. He doesn’t particularly fancy the idea of falling off the rig and getting swept up in the great tyres. Like the war boy.

Seems like an unpleasant way to go.

He gets to the roof just in time to see a war boy tackling Flower around the waist, another preparing to launch a spear at him.

Geno doesn’t waste any time. He reaches for his gun and puts a bullet through the boy’s brain.

The war boy goes down without a sound, and the one that’s got Flower pinned to the rig swivels his head around to look, taking a moment to yell out, “Witness!” to his fallen companion.

The slight distraction is all Flower needs. He bucks his hips, dislodging the war boy before slamming his fist into his throat. The war boy gurgles, blood trickling out the side of his mouth. When Flower pulls back his fist, Geno can see the glint of a blade hidden in his palm, the sharp edge of it stained a dark, murky red.

Geno lifts his brows at him, and Flower shrugs.

“Never leave home without one,” he says, wiping the blade against the cloth of his pants.

War boys, Geno think uncharitably, are all batshit insane.

 _Must be why_ _you feel such a kinship to them._

Geno scowls at the voice inside his head, because the truth is he does feel some sort of kinship to them. He likes them. Flower, Taylor...as annoying as he finds them, as much as he resents them for capturing him, he can’t help but like them just a little—can’t help but, well. He’s not sure what he feels for Sidney. Something too complex to figure out here and now.

— _danger, danger_ —

“That was the last of them,” Flower says. “Let’s get back to the cab. We’re about to enter the Wastelands.”

**

About an hour’s drive into the Wastelands makes it clear why no one ever enters it—not if they can help it. There is nothingness all around them, for as far as they eye can see. Nothing but the dead, flatness of the land, covered in dust and sand.

Geno doesn’t know what they are doing here.

Without the immediate threat of the war fleet, the doctor has cleared out the hold and kept only one of the fair-haired brides behind to assist him with the injured war boy. Nikky has rejoined them in the cab, and along with him, someone they call Derrick. Geno fears they’ll crowd up the back of the cab, that he’ll have Nikky pressed into his side with Sidney against his other, Sidney's sweet, tantalising scent tickling his nose and clouding his head even more than it already is. He’s relieved when Tanger climbs out of the hold and instead of taking a seat, reclaims his perch on the roof; he is joined by the last of the brides. Sidney calls him Beau.

“I need the air. Helps with the nausea,” he says before letting Tanger help him scale the rig.

Out of all of them, he smells the most like Sidney—without the hint of rot.

Geno is still struggling to figure out what that means. What they really _are_.

Omegas. An explanation of what they are but not what it means.

“Is it really a good idea to leave his hands unbound?”

“Derrick,” Sidney says, chiding, but when Geno turns his head to look at the boy, he’s eyeing him curiously, no sign of hostility on his face. Instead, he looks fascinated.

“What? I’m just asking. He did threaten to shoot you.”

“Yes, but he never would have actually done it,” Sidney says, and this time, he sounds absolutely sure.

Geno still doesn’t understand where this unwavering faith in him is coming from. They’re strangers, but Sidney is relentless. He refused point blank when Taylor had made some noise about binding his hands again, more for the sake of protocol than anything else, Geno suspects. She’s a warrior, after all.

But if not sharing Sidney’s inexplicable fondness for him, she seems to appreciate Geno’s interest in Sidney’s safety.

Geno can respect that.

“Do you really not know what an omega is? You’re an alpha, aren’t you?” Derrick asks.

“He is,” Taylor confirms. She spares a second to look over her shoulder, narrowing her eyes thoughtfully at Geno.

Derrick nods agreeably, accepting Taylor’s authority on the subject without much fuss. He looks at Geno again. “Then how come you don’t know? I’ve never met an alpha who doesn’t know what an omega is.”

Geno scowls at him. He doesn’t even know what it means to be an alpha, much less an omega, though he refrains from pointing this out.

“Derrick,” Sidney says. He sighs wearily. “Leave him alone.”

“But aren’t you a little bit curious? It’s just strange, is all.”

“I—” Nikky clears his throat hesitantly. His eyes are fastened on Geno’s tattoo. “I’m, uh, I’m curious too.”

Geno doesn’t talk about his past. In the beginning, when the nomads had taken him in after the destruction of his village, it was because it had been too painful to think about, because he couldn’t shut out the screams of the people fleeing for their lives or the heartbreaking loss of his family.

Later, he’d been mostly alone, wandering the desert on foot until he found the abandoned car that would become his mobile home. For a long time, there had been no one to talk to.

He’d meet people sometimes, stumbling over those brave enough to roam the desert. People like Cookie. None of them had ever inspired much trust or safety; Geno had kept his dealings with them as brief as possible, never offering any details about himself other than the name he goes by.

“Hey.”

He blinks at the soft voice, startling out of his daze as Sidney places a gentle hand on his arm. “Are you okay?”

Geno swallows. “Yeah. Yes. I’m fine.” He tears his eyes away from Sidney, reluctant, and focuses his gaze on Nikky. “I’ve been alone for a very long time. When I was young, a boy of just ten summers past, my village was destroyed by a raiding party. They burned it to the ground. People fled into the night, but I—”

He breaks off, still wondering over the marvel that there might have been other survivors. Nikky doesn’t look familiar, not exactly, but his features resemble those of his people—it’s entirely possible that Nikky’s parents had been part of the refugees. If that is true, it means Nikky is like Geno, descendent of the Slavic people; all the villagers had shared certain commonalities of their heritage.

“I thought they all died. I thought I was alone.”

Sidney abandons his grip on his arm, but before Geno has the time to mourn the loss, Sidney finds his hand discreetly instead. He slots his fingers between Geno’s, his skin remarkably soft, unblemished; when Geno looks at him, their eyes meeting, Sidney whispers, “You’re not alone anymore,” low enough that only he hears.

Somehow, Geno believes him.

“What happened after?” Nikky asks, but Geno keeps his eyes on Sidney, finds the words come easier with Sidney’s steady gaze grounding him in the here and now. For once, his mind is startlingly clear; there are no voices inside his head contradicting each other.

“I was taken in by nomads; they took care of me until I was old enough to fend for myself. I’ve been walking the desert ever since.”

“And then you got captured by the war boys,” Sidney says. “As a blood bag.”

Geno nods. “I’m a universal donor. That’s what they said.” It is the reason he’d been strung up like cattle, like something less than human, something for the war boys to exploit as they saw fit.

In a way, Geno supposes he’s lucky that he was allocated to the injured war boy down in the hold; if he’d been anyone else’s blood bag, he wouldn’t have been brought along on Bettman’s war party. He wouldn’t have met Sidney.

There is silence for a moment, broken only by Taylor’s snort. “Nomads,” she says, her derision obvious. “All betas who wouldn’t even have a clue how to handle an omega.” She ignores Flower’s insulted, “Hey!” and says, “No wonder you didn’t know what they are. You really haven’t met one before, have you? I bet you’ve never even had a rut.”

Sidney gasps at that, and when Geno looks at him, his eyes have gone wide in surprise.

“You’ve never had a rut? You’re a, a _virgin_?” he asks incredulously, as if the very idea of it is entirely inconceivable to him.

Geno is not sure what a rut is, but he recognises the word virgin; he’s a loner, depending only on himself for survival. To trust someone long enough to get naked, or even partially naked, can be a death sentence.

Geno shudders. He remembers a story Cookie had told him once, about a guy whose dick had been cut off by a jilted lover. _Poor sucker,_ Cookie had said. _At least he wasn’t disembowelled like Nealer. Bad business, that._

No. Geno has done just fine by himself, using his hand to get off whenever he’s needed it.

“Haven’t you ever wondered where children come from?”

Geno shrugs at Derrick’s question. “I’ve never really thought about it. I haven’t been around children since I was a boy, before my village burned.”

“So you don’t know that Sid is pregnant, that there is a baby inside of him? All this time you’ve just thought he was fat?” Derrick asks blithely, as if Geno has been with them for days already and not the hours it’s been since the rig broke down after the sandstorm.

Geno shrugs again, but his eyes slip to rest on Sidney’s protruding stomach. The heavy roundness is obviously not just a simple surplus of fat. He breathes in deep, and the hint of rot is still hidden in Sidney’s scent. There is no life there. If there truly is a child inside of him, it is dead, and has been dead for days already.

Sidney shakes his head minutely, his grip tightening on Geno’s hand. He must realise Geno can smell the truth and he doesn’t want the others to know.

Geno aches for him. A child is a precious thing, he knows, and Sidney’s is dead.

“How does it work?” he asks in an effort to distract them all. He immediately regrets it when Derrick visibly brightens; he takes great delight in regaling them all about the complex—and graphic—nature of conception, pregnancy, and childbirth.

Geno gapes at him, pale-faced, and in the passenger seat, Flower is turned towards them, staring at Derrick with wide, horrified eyes.

“How the hell do you even know all that stuff?” he demands, appalled.

Derrick smiles at him cheerfully. “Bettman’s library. Not much else to do but browse the shelves in between.” He doesn’t say in between what, but Geno can read the subtext just fine, can hardly imagine the horror.

It’s not only his brides he’s after; Taylor has absconded with Bettman’s children, Sidney’s child, and the bride’s on the roof. Beau’s.

Geno looks at Sidney again, but for the first time since they met, Sidney angles his head away, refusing to meet his gaze. He looks desolate, lost, and Geno feels the weight of his sadness like a physical thing, heavy and raw inside his chest.

“Where are you running to?” he asks him quietly.

“The Green Place,” Taylor says, her sharp voice breaking the sudden silence that had fallen over them all.

Geno startles. He hadn’t really expected an answer.

“What is the Green Place?”

“It’s where our parents were born. Where they lived before they were captured by war boys and brought to the Citadel.” _Like you_ , she doesn’t say.

“Our mother believed it still exists,” Sidney says quietly. “She said there had been fresh water and things that grew there, that the land was fertile.”

Geno holds back a frown. He doesn’t want to discourage Sidney, but he knows—they _all_ know—that there are no more fertile lands. Nothing green grows anymore. Not outside the Citadel.

“And this is where you are going?”

In the driver’s seat, staring resolutely ahead, Taylor nods. “There is nowhere else to go.”

And there is the truth of it.

To go back is to brave Bettman’s army, almost certainly a suicide mission. To go forward is to brave the unknown, but the uncertainty of the unknown, Geno thinks, of what lies ahead, might be worse than what they leave behind.

There is no preparing for the unknown, nothing beyond hope and blind faith—and what is that, really?

They’re crazy, all of them. They’re going to get themselves killed. Geno should leave, should let them carry on without him; he could still make it back to the Canyon Dwellers. Cookie would welcome him with open arms if it meant Geno owing him a favour. But—

“Will you come with us?” Sidney asks, and there is really only one answer to that question. He can’t leave them yet.

“Yes.”

**

**SIDNEY**

******

 

“Yes,” Geno says, and Sidney breathes a little easier at his answer.

It’s been a very long time since he’s felt any semblance of safe, but this stranger, Geno, makes him feel protected. Geno makes him feel as though Bettman truly can’t get to him in a way that Taylor, or even Flower, never has.

It doesn’t make sense, defies all reason, but Sidney has found something in Geno he wasn’t even aware he’s been looking for. Far from being a stranger, Sidney feels as if they have known each other all of their lives, is already associating his increasingly familiar scent with comfort and safety.

It should be unnerving, he thinks. He should be more than a little unsettled by the unexpected closeness he feels to this strange man. Instead, he’s just relieved.

Geno will take care of him.

Sidney isn’t sure how he knows that, only that it’s true.

“Where is this Green Place?” Geno asks, and in the driver’s seat, Taylor makes a one-shouldered shrug.

“We’re not entirely sure. A long night’s run at least. Headed east.”

Sidney watches Geno as he hums thoughtfully. He has to hide a smile; they may not have known each other long, but Sidney can already tell Geno is questioning their collective sanity.

He feels a sudden flare of pain in his side, and he chokes on a gasp, coughing to try to mask the pain the contraction is causing him. He’s been feeling them ever since the gunfight in the canyon, when Geno pushed him to the floor of the cab and Sidney had first thought his stomach was contracting painfully from the stress of Bettman’s war boys being so close.

A few surges of pain later and Sidney had known the truth of his pain. He was going into labour.

He’d tried shifting, climbing onto the seat next to Geno in an effort to dispel the pain. It had only served to make Geno and Taylor yell at him, and had done little to ease his pain besides.

“Sid? Are you okay?”

Sidney nods at Taylor’s question, meeting her eyes in the rearview mirror. He tries to smile at her, but from the way she frowns, he must not do a very good job.

“You’re not okay,” Geno says worriedly. “What is wrong?”

“Nothing, I’m fine,” Sidney says, just as another contraction hits him. There is no hiding his pained gasp this time.

“Bullshit. You’re in fucking labour!”

“What?” Geno demands at Flower’s words. He stares intently at Sidney’s stomach, as if he can force the child to remain inside by the power of his will alone.

Sidney doesn’t blame him; Derrick’s description of childbirth had been horrifyingly graphic and painfully detailed.

Taylor curses heavily. She pulls the rope of the rig’s horn, signalling for Duper to stop up ahead. It’s the only way they have of communicating now that the walkie-talkie has been destroyed.

“Danny!” she barks out once she’s pulled her foot off the gas and the rig has slowed to a stop. “We need you up here.”

**

Sidney loses track of time at the unbearable pain of his contractions, but once Danny gets involved, things move quickly at least. Danny bans all but Derrick and Geno from the cab; Derrick to help with the birth, and Geno in case things go wrong.

“Your blood may come in handy,” he tells Geno.

Childbirth proves to be as painful and taxing as Sidney has been expecting. He fears the fact that his child is dead will complicate things, and Danny must read the fear on his face, because he says, “You are dilated nicely and your contractions do not appear abnormal. This will be a birth like any other.”

Except there will be no newborn screaming at the end of it.

Sidney can hardly breathe from the pain of that thought. He is being given a chance at a new life and a new beginning; it feels doubly cruel then, that his child is not.

“Okay, Sidney, on your next contraction, you’re going to want to push. I need you not to do that, okay?” Danny says. His head is ducked between Sidney’s spread legs.

Sidney looks at him incredulously. “What?” he pants out. He must be a mess of sweat and tears, but Geno, propped up behind him, letting Sidney squeeze one hand while the other strokes through his sweat-slicked hair, seems not to care.

“Do as the doctor tells you,” he says. “It’s okay. Everything is okay.” It’s an obvious lie, but Sidney feels better for it nonetheless.

“Danny?”

Danny pulls back from Sidney’s thighs, his face set into a professional mask as he explains, “Your water is still intact, Sidney. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything bad, only that the baby will be born inside the amniotic sac.”

“Why don’t you manually break his water?” Derrick asks, just as Sidney demands, “What the hell is the amniotic sac?”

“The amniotic sac is the membrane protecting the baby. It contains the fluids that allow the baby to move inside of you. Manually breaking the sac increases the risk of infection, especially if the labour doesn’t progress after,” Danny explains to them, and finally loses some of his cool professionalism as he meets Sidney’s eyes regretfully.

They both know that a potential risk of infection doesn’t matter at this point, not to the child anyway. The baby is already dead.

Sidney gives him a tight nod.

“Okay,” Danny says. “On the next contraction, push as hard as you can.”

Sidney pushes.

**

It’s a short labour, considering, but they have precious little time to waste and cannot afford to remain motionless for much longer.

Sidney clings to the tiny body for a few minutes before he lets Taylor take the baby from his arms and bury him in the sand next to the rig.

It was a boy, perfectly formed. Sidney names him Troy, after his father.

Nikky starts crying when he finds out the baby was stillborn and can’t make himself stop. Sidney doesn’t mind. It almost feels as if he is crying for both of them; Sidney’s eyes have been dry since Danny placed the lifeless little body in his arms and said, “It’s a boy, Sidney.”

They drive on, silent but for Nikky’s choked sobs and the occasional sound of someone shifting in their seat.

Sidney appreciates the silence, wouldn’t know what to say anyway. He leans his head against the window, feeling the heavy weight of Geno’s eyes on him from time to time. When Geno reaches over to take his hand, Sidney lets him.

Once the sun sets, the darkness of night falls quickly, but Taylor is determined to carry on. They stop only for as long as it takes for them to switch drivers in both vehicles, but it’s enough for some of Bettman’s people to catch up to them.

Tanger takes them out with a sniper’s rifle from his perch on the roof with five shots, not a single bullet wasted.

Taylor doesn’t even have to give the order; Duper’s car veers sharply to the left, wheels spinning through the sand to reach the dead war boys. They strip the small party of bullets and fuel, returning to their position ahead of the rig in a matter of minutes.

It’s brutally effective, and Sidney, while not one for violence himself, recognises the necessity. A part of him is even glad for it. It’s the dark part inside of him, the bitter one, the one aching at the loss of his child.

He is glad Tanger killed them.

When the sun breaks on the horizon the next morning, Sidney knows they must have driven for hours and hours, but he has gotten very little sleep.

His stomach feels empty. Empty and hollow.

Geno keeps eyeing him worriedly, sharing furtive glances with Taylor in the mirror when he thinks Sidney isn’t looking.

She’s back in the driver’s seat now.

“How long before we get to the Green Place?” Derrick asks once.

“As long as it takes,” Taylor says sharply, and for a while, there is no more talk.

The silence ends when there is a thud on the roof before Beau’s face pops down by the window next to Sidney. “Tanger says he can see some kind of construction up ahead. It’s tall. He thinks there is someone up there.”

Tanger is not wrong, and when they roll to a stop a healthy distance away from the woman screaming for help at the top of the strange steel tower before them, Geno grumbles, “ _That_ is a trap.” He looks entirely unimpressed with the ploy.

“Obviously,” Taylor snipes at him, annoyed. She eyes the still screaming woman sceptically.

“What do you want to do, boss?”

“Tell Duper to get the ammunition ready. I want to be prepared if it’s an ambush.”

Flower nods, jumping out of the rig and sprinting across the sand to Duper’s car. Sidney watches him go dispassionately.

“Danny, how are things down in the hold? Can the war boy fight?” Taylor asks.

Danny hums in concentration, and Sidney thinks he’s stalling for time. He knows how fond of Claude he is. Eventually though, Danny gives his consent, obviously reluctant. He helps Claude out of the hold and into Flower’s abandoned seat.

“‘Course I can fight,” Claude huffs out once he’s seated. He sneers at Taylor haughtily. “Fighting is what I do.”

Sidney has never had any dealings with Claude personally, but their paths have crossed sometimes. Sidney had thought him as odd then as he does now; Claude was never quite like the other war boys, most of who would leer at Sidney lustily whenever they laid eyes on him, even in Flower’s presence.

Claude is brash and callous, and Sidney doesn’t much like him, but he will always respect him—he’ll always be grateful for the time Claude had protected him from the wrath of a rejected war boy with delirious claims to Sidney’s body.

It had earned him Bettman’s favour and gratitude, but Sidney doesn’t think Claude ever cared much for that.

He feels Geno shift a little closer to him when Taylor hands Claude a loaded gun.

Taylor may have decided Claude is of no threat to them, but Geno appears not to share the sentiment. He was his blood bag, after all. There must still be some resentment there.

“It’s okay,” Sidney tells him quietly. He waits until Geno is looking at him before continuing. “He won’t hurt anyone.” _He won’t hurt me_ , he doesn’t say, but Geno picks up on it anyway, relaxing marginally in his seat.

Sidney closes his eyes for a second. He lets his head fall tiredly against Geno’s shoulder and smiles wanly when he feels hesitant fingers brush through his hair, the touch oddly gentle.

“Everyone is ready, boss. Waiting for your command,” Flower says when he returns to the rig.

“All right. Stay alert, everyone. Flower, you’re at the wheel; we’re hightailing it out of here if shit goes wrong.”

Sidney blinks. He feels his apathy morph into something like concern when Taylor exits the rig, disarmed, lifting her hands carefully in the air the way she had back in the canyon.

“What are you doing?” he demands.

“I’m going to find out what the hell is going on.”

Sidney stares with wide eyes as she stalks closer to the steel tower, yelling loudly to no one in particular it seems.

“Your sister is insane,” Geno whispers, but there is a trace of admiration there.

Sidney can’t help but agree a little.

“My name is Taylor Crosby, daughter of Troy and Trina Crosby,” Taylor is saying. “I am looking for my parents’ people and the village they came from. The Green Place.”

The woman in the steel tower stops screaming. She surveys Taylor silently for a moment.

Sidney waits, holding his breath, and finally, the woman lifts her hands to her mouth and lets loose a high-pitched call.

A number of motorcycles descend from the sand dunes around them as the woman in the steel tower grabs a thick rope and makes her descent to the ground. She’s naked, Sidney observes, watching as she quickly shrugs into a tunic once she has reached the ground. She rushes towards where the others, six in all, have stopped their bikes only metres away from Taylor.

“Taylor is not a name I recognise, but the name Trina is familiar. I knew a Trina as a child, and her husband, Troy. They would sometimes care for me while my parents tended to the then-fertile soil, before our village burned.”

Her voice is strong and loud. Sidney can easily hear her even from the rig.

“Then it must have been my mother,” Taylor says, firm.

The woman stares at her for a moment, keen eyes searching Taylor’s face. “Yes. I think it must have been,” the woman agrees. She breaks into a wide smile and barrels into Taylor, closing her arms around her for a tight hug.

Taylor stiffens for a second, surprised, but then her body relaxes, returning the hug just as fiercely.

“Perhaps she really is Trina’s child,” one of the others comments. “Just look at the eyes. Trina had eyes like that.”

“Where have you come from?”

“And where is your mother? Your father?”

Sidney shifts impatiently, wanting out of the cab as Taylor begins explaining the events that have led them here.

“Geno,” he whispers. “Move. I want to meet them.”

Geno looks doubtful, but Taylor is signalling over her shoulder, beckoning them to come join her. Duper and his passengers spill out of the car, and Derrick is already moving out of his seat and pushing to the front of the cab. He casually climbs over Claude’s lap to get to the door, ignoring Claude’s strangled yelp and fiery blush as Derrick yanks the handle and jumps out of the cab, eagerly bounding across the sand to get to Taylor and the others. Claude follows after him at a more sedate pace, grumbling under his breath about personal space all the while. They are joined by Flower and Danny and Tanger, and Sidney’s sibling brides, until only Sidney and Geno remain.

They leave the doors open, and a gust of wind blows through the cab.

Sidney startles.

He breathes in the tell-tale scent in the air, so strong and concentrated it easily carries in the wind. The strangers are omegas, all of them.

“How is that possible?” he murmurs to himself. Bettman has collected omegas for years, hoarding them jealously from alphas who would take them from him; he has hunting parties dedicated to the sole purpose of tracking them down. Sidney doesn’t understand how such a big cluster has gone unnoticed for so long, even this far out in the Wastelands.

Geno sends him a questioning look, and Sidney shakes his head. “Help me out?” he asks. He wants to meet them, wants to ask them about his mother, and Sidney is coming to understand that Geno is weak for his pleas; he’ll grumble about it, but he’ll do as asked.

Sure enough, Sidney is given a foreboding frown and a deep sigh before Geno gently helps him up from his seat and out of the rig, taking care not to jostle Sidney’s still sore body.

Childbirth is no simple task, and Sidney will be feeling the effects on his body for some time to come.

Just another reminder of his dead child.

“Who is this?”

One of the strangers tears off the cloth that’s been covering her lower face. She glares distrustfully at Geno, her eyes narrowed on where his arm is wrapped around Sidney’s waist as they approach the rest of the group slowly.

Her voice is harsh, threatening, and she takes a step forward in warning even as Flower moves to block her path—he has never been one to take a threat against Sidney lightly, and he seems determined to continue to protect him even now.

Sidney feels a rush of fondness for Flower, but he can’t find it in himself to blame the woman for her caution. They’re a party of sixteen: five omegas, seven betas, and four alphas. Geno is one of four, but he is far removed from Taylor’s tightly held control and Danny’s placid calm. Nor does he possess the lingering innocence of Cameron, whose youth marks him as an alpha yet to reach maturity.

Geno is different. Almost feral, and definitely dangerous.

His wildness is tempered only by Sidney’s presence.

“This one is called Geno,” Taylor explains calmly. “He won’t hurt anyone. He helped us get this far; I swear to you he is harmless.”

Geno bares his teeth at her, looking nothing like the harmless being Taylor claims him to be, but he makes no move to leave Sidney’s side, and the woman seems to recognise that, even appreciating it.

She spares a moment to sneer back at Geno before turning her head to survey them all. All sixteen of them.

She sighs.

“You must be hungry. Come, let us eat.”

**

Food does them all good. None of them have eaten since they set out from the Citadel the previous day, and Sidney doesn't realise how famished he was until he gets some much needed food. He doesn’t even care that the stew they are given is bland and without spice, so grateful to have something warm fill his belly and restore some of his energy.

He glances up and catches sight of Geno devouring his own portion. He must have been starving.

Sidney can’t imagine the war boys would have fed him much before they strung him up as Claude’s blood bag.

“Good?” he asks, and can’t help but chuckle when Geno grunts absently, practically inhaling his food.

They’re sequestered a little ways off to the side, just Sidney and Geno, away from Taylor and the others—though still within Flower’s line of view—and the Many Mothers.

The Many Mothers. That’s what they call themselves; six females and one male, the seven omegas who took them in on nothing but faith and the memory of one of their own.

“The Green Place no longer exists,” one of them explained. “It burned to the ground when Trina and the others were taken. The soil never recovered; nothing grows there now. I’m sorry.”

Taylor lost her stoic composure at the news. She turned towards Sidney, blindly grabbing for him with her good arm. Sidney had gone to her, and together, the two stood silently, heads bent together, mourning the last remnants of their mother.

Sidney knew, they both had, that the likelihood of finding the Green Place, of it still existing, was small, miniscule even. Somehow, they’d still believed in it. They’d had nothing but useless faith, but it was all they had.

The others had given them a moment of peace before one of the omegas had invited them to join in on a ceremony to honour their lost ones. She had named herself Carole-Lynne, and Duper was half in love with her already.

Carole-Lynne was less than impressed.

Sidney has never met such an independent and self-sufficient omega. They’re all like that, and he can’t help but admire and envy them in equal measure.

They are strong and fierce, and while they have suffered hardships, they have been free all of their lives. Whatever their suffering may have been, it was not caused by Bettman’s hand.

“Eat. Or I will eat your food for you.”

Sidney jumps. He looks at where Geno is eyeing his food hungrily, and he clutches his bowl protectively to his chest. “You stay away,” he tells him, waving his makeshift spoon at him. “You have your own food.”

“I’ve finished it. It was good.”

Sidney opens his mouth to voice his disagreement; he so used to the hearty meals provided to all of Bettman’s brides, diligently prepared by the maids and the servant boys on kitchen duty. He thinks better of it when he catches Geno’s gaze. His eyes dip to the hint of a hollow in Geno's cheeks, and Sidney flushes guiltily. Not everyone has had the same steady source of food. He sighs, looking down at his stew.

“Here, you can have the rest of mine. I’m done, anyway.”

Geno snorts at that. “Spoilt,” he accuses, reading between the lines just fine. He waves away the bowl Sidney is holding out to him in offer. “Eat,” he says again.

Sidney looks at him for a moment, breaking into a small smile when Geno won’t meet his eyes, looking away stubbornly until Sidney gives in and resumes eating.

He wonders if Geno is aware that Sidney can tell how much he cares.

“These—” Geno searches for the correct word, lifting a hand to gesture at where the others are seated around a campfire, Duper trying his hardest to get Carole-Lynne to speak to him.

“Omegas,” Sidney fills in.

“Omegas,” Geno dutifully repeats. “You will go with them? Can’t stay here. Isn’t safe.”

Here is nowhere. Not the Green Place and not any kind of settled land. The Many Mothers kept to the area around the scorched earth of what had once been their village, unable to make themselves abandon it. They kept moving in a circle around the land, never staying too long in one place.

“So we’re not easy targets,” Carole-Lynne had told them.

Moving camp won’t keep them safe any longer. Not with Sidney and his sibling brides in their midst; not with Bettman on their trail.

They need to leave the Wastelands entirely now, to cross the Salt Plains and venture into the Place Beyond.

“Yes.” Sidney shrugs. “Taylor wants to. She thinks it will be safer than to go back, and I agree. The Many Mothers have more bikes we can use, and if we abandon the rig and just take the car, we should have enough fuel for a hundred days or so. We’ll get far in a hundred days.”

Geno makes a strange sound, obviously not sold on the idea.

“What?”

“You’ll go far in a hundred days,” Geno agrees. “But where? No one here has ever crossed the Salt Plains. Don’t know how big it is or if there’s even anything at the other end.”

Sidney sets his jaw. “I know it’s away from Bettman and the Citadel. That’s enough.”

Geno has nothing to say to that, and Sidney wouldn’t want to hear it if he did. He won’t go back. Not ever.

“Sid! You done eating? We’re calling it a night.”

They look over to see Taylor approaching them, barely even sparing Geno a glance before her gaze settles on Sidney.

“Come on, you can sleep in the rig with the others.”

Sidney shakes his head. “I’ll stay out here with Geno.” He doesn’t want to leave him, and he feels safer, strangely, with Geno next to him.

Taylor eyes him for a long moment. She says, “Are you sure?” and at Sidney’s firm nod gives in without much of a fight, disappearing off to the rig before returning with a couple of heavy blankets. “It’ll get cold,” she says before glaring over at Geno. “Don’t let my brother freeze.”

“Your sister doesn’t like me much,” Geno says as he watches Taylor stalk away from them.

“No,” Sidney agrees. There is no point in lying. He grabs one of the blankets and lies down in the sand, shifting around until he’s somewhat comfortable. He doesn’t have to wait long before Geno joins him, careful to leave some space between them.

Sidney rolls his eyes and scoots closer, grumbling under his breath about having to give up his comfortable spot.

“You’re the one who moved!”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Sidney says.

Geno doesn’t answer, but he does lift his arm to allow Sidney to settle close to him. Sidney gets the feeling his sister would disapprove.

They’re silent for a while.

“I’m sorry,” Geno says finally. “About the baby. It must be painful.”

“Yes.” More painful than anything he’s ever been through before. Sidney turns his head, searching out Geno’s eyes in the dark. “You knew, didn’t you? Even before. You could tell the baby was dead. How?”

“I could smell it.”

“Smell it?”

Geno nods. He hesitates for a second before he says, “The rot of death. I could smell it on your scent.”

Sidney closes his eyes, pained. His poor child. Dead for days and decaying inside Sidney’s womb, the one place he should be safe.

“But you didn’t know I was pregnant, right? What did you think the...the rot was?”

“Didn’t think anything, Sidney. Didn’t have time to think. Too much was happening.” Geno turns on his side, shifting so he can rest his arm over Sidney’s waist. They stare into each other’s’ eyes.

“Are you really a virgin?” Sidney asks.

“Yes. Never trusted anyone enough to lay with them before.”

“But you trust me?”

“Yes,” Geno whispers again, and Sidney’s breath hitches. He inches his face closer to Geno’s, so close their lips brush when Sidney says, “I wish I was a virgin. I would have been, if not for Bettman.”

There are a lot of things, he thinks, that would have been if not for Bettman.

“I want to kiss you—” Sidney is cut off by Geno, who takes the words as an invitation before closing his mouth over Sidney’s, and this, at least, he must have done before.

He moves his lips over Sidney’s expertly, tracing the seam of his mouth with his tongue until Sidney gasps just enough for him to slip inside. Sidney moans as their tongues tangle together. It feels good, so much better than he could have ever imagined.

It’s his first kiss.

He’d never, as many times as Bettman had claimed him, allowed their lips to touch. Bettman had tried, even removing his god-awful mask for it, but Sidney had made it more work than it was worth, and in the end, Bettman had given up, content to concentrate on the fucking instead.

Sidney breaks away from Geno with a gasp when the need to breathe becomes too much, and he pants, chest heaving as he stares at Geno with wide, startled eyes.

“I—I didn’t know kissing could be so good. That was my first.”

Geno groans at his words and leans over to steal another kiss, his mouth claiming Sidney’s as if it is his due.

They kiss for a long time. They kiss the night away, it feels like.

In the morning, when the sun is high enough in the sky that it becomes too hot to stay hidden underneath the blankets any longer, Sidney is curled up next to Geno, feeling as if he has gotten no sleep and not caring at all.

He wishes they could stay like that forever.

Someone clears their throat loudly, and Sidney looks away from Geno’s warm gaze to see Cameron. He’s glaring at Geno spitefully, his eyes going a little blank when they flicker over to Sidney, taking in what must be his kiss-swollen mouth and flushed cheeks.

“Breakfast,” Cameron stutters out, sparing Geno one more glare and casting a longing glance at Sidney before scurrying away.

Geno snorts.

“Don’t be mean,” Sidney scolds him. “He’s young.”

“Not young enough,” Geno grumbles, and he reminds Sidney so much of Flower in that moment he bursts out laughing, bright and happy, in a way he hasn’t laughed in a long, long time.

He means to share his observation with Geno, but when he looks over, Geno is already looking back at him, staring at Sidney with this little, secretive smile on his face. He looks—Sidney doesn’t know what he looks like.

“What?” he asks, a little self-consciously.

Geno shakes his head at him, his smile morphing into a grin. “Nothing,” he says. “Come. I’m hungry.”

**

Taylor wants to get moving as soon as possible. After a meagre breakfast of dried nuts and aged, cured meat, she’s quick to plan out a schedule, working seamlessly with Carole-Lynne to get them all moving.

Carole-Lynne is clearly a leader among the Many Mothers, and Duper has decided her word is scripture; not a single one of them dare defy her words or instructions.

Sidney is deemed not ready by Danny to do anything too strenuous, much to Taylor and Geno’s mutual satisfaction. It grates on him, and he doesn’t like feeling so useless, but he’s still sore from giving birth and he recognises there is no point in aggravating the hurt.

Instead, he’s put to sort out the remainder of their ammunition while the others scurry around him. Sidney scowls at them for a moment, glaring at the bodies going to and fro. No one pays him any attention, and finally he sighs, figuring he may as well be somewhat productive and do as bid.

He’s got a gun in his hand, holding it carelessly as he tries to figure out how to get the bullets inside the chamber when a strong hand clamps down around his wrist.

Sidney looks up to see Geno. He looks tense.

“Are you _trying_ to blow your fucking brains out?”

Sidney flushes at Geno’s terse words, growing defensive in response.

“I’m trying to load a gun.”

“It’s already loaded. Fuck.” Geno very gently picks the gun out of Sidney’s hands and places it off to the side, out of reach.

Sidney’s flush deepens, realising he’s had the barrel pointed in the direction of his face.

“Oh,” he says, losing all of his righteous anger. He exhales heavily.

Geno rubs a hand through his hair, looking harried and frustrated. “Don’t you know how to load a gun?”

“Not really. I never got around to learning.”

“You—What?” Geno stares at him, incredulous. “Your sister is an imperator and you’ve grown up surrounded by war boys. How do you not know how to load a gun?”

Sidney shrugs. “Guns make me nervous. Bullets too. My mother used to call them anti-seeds. Plant one and watch someone die. I guess it just stuck with me.” He picks up one of the bullets from the pile he’s been sorting through, holding it up to his face before eyeing it critically.

“I think the world would be better off without them, but I suppose even guns serve a purpose. I’ve never fired one though. I don’t think I’d want to.”

Geno frowns at him. “You may have to.”

Sidney hums and doesn’t answer. He sees Geno shake his head at him from the corner of his eye, but ultimately he decides not to push. They fall into a comfortable silence, with Sidney sorting all the bullets into separate piles and Geno loading the guns and checking to make sure they work.

“Watch,” he says once, carefully going through the steps to prepping one of the smaller guns and making sure that Sidney pays close attention. “Just in case,” he says, snapping the magazine into place.

When Taylor walks up to them some time later, they have managed to sort through most of the ammunition.

She stands over them, surveying their work for a while. Sidney eyes her back curiously, but it’s Geno she is interested in this time.

“You tagging along or what?”

Geno doesn’t look up from the gun he’s assembling, but Sidney sees the way his hands still, just for a moment.

“There’s a bike for you too, you know. If you want it.”

Geno nods gratefully. “I’d appreciate a bike either way, if you’re willing to part with it.”

“It’s yours no matter what.” Taylor pauses, her gaze flickering between the two of them.

She’s so blunt most of the time, Sidney can’t help but feel a little unsettled by her obvious show of hesitancy.

“You’re not going then?” she asks finally.

Sidney stiffens and holds his breath. He hadn’t even considered the possibility that Geno might not come with them—even after their discussion the previous night, he’d just assumed.

“Whatever it is you’re looking for beyond there—” Geno makes a vague gesture in the direction of the Salt Plains “—is not for me. It’s for you to discover. My place is here.”

“You’re not coming with us?” _With me?_ Sidney doesn’t say. He doesn’t have to; the betrayal washing over him is plain to see on his face.

“Sid…” Geno says helplessly. He puts the gun down by his side, turning to Sidney until he can grab his hand with his own. He shifts their grip until their fingers interlock, and doesn’t even spare Taylor so much as cursory glance before he lifts their hands to his mouth, pressing a lingering kiss over their joint fingers.

Sidney purses his lips. He doesn’t notice when Taylor quietly takes her leave.

“Why would you stay? What could possibly be left here for you?”

Geno winces at his cruel words, but he doesn’t break their hold, and neither does Sidney, as angry as he is with Geno right now.

“You know, I’ve spent a very long time thinking I was all alone in this world. I thought all of my people were dead, that when my village burned there was nothing left. No family, no kin. But now—” Geno breaks off, his eyes searching until he finds where Nikky is moving from bike to bike, fastening a couple of water bottles to each of them.

Sidney swallows, reading the naked want off Geno’s face. “Now there’s Nikky,” he finishes. “You really think he’s right? That his parents were from your village?”

“It’s possible. His tattoo, his cheeks, his nose; it’s so familiar. I have to know, Sid. I have to know if my people escaped safely, if they settled new land.”

“And if they didn’t?”

Geno shrugs. “Then they didn’t. I still have to find out.”

Sidney sighs. He can’t begrudge Geno his need to seek out his kin; Sidney’s life has been miserable for much of the time, but at least he’s had his mother, and now his sister. At least he hasn’t been alone.

“Nikky’s full name is Nikita,” he says. “He was very young when he came to the valley. He was part of a cluster of slaves; the tattoo was already there.”

Geno beams at him. “And his parents?” he asks, clearly eager for any information that can help him.

Sidney shakes his head sadly. “They didn’t make it. He was raised by the people in the valley. They kept him away from the war boys until they couldn’t hide the fact he was an omega any longer. Like me,” he can’t help but add. He has to blink against the sudden flash of memory before his eyes, the sight of his father being stabbed to death and the sound of his own voice screaming, _Daddy!_

“Sid?”

He startles, his lashes fluttering wildly as the memory fades and Geno’s concerned face comes into focus. “I’m fine. Sorry, I’m okay.”

Geno eyes him dubiously. “You need water,” he decides. He gently disentangles their hands before Sidney can protest, climbing to his feet and giving Sidney a stern, “Don’t move.”

Sidney stares after him. He can’t believe they’ve only known each other for a couple of days; he already misses him, and they haven’t even parted ways yet—Sidney is going to miss him for a long time to come.

A few minutes go by, and Sidney frowns when he realises Geno should have been back by now. He looks around their makeshift camp until he sees quite a few of them have grouped together around the bikes. Sidney has been so distracted with thoughts of Geno, he hadn’t even noticed.

Disregarding the order to stay put, Sidney gingerly makes his way to his feet. “What’s going on?” he asks once he’s joined them. Derrick and Olli, who’s been huddled close together, make place for him to join the half circle across from Taylor and, he notices with some surprise, Geno.

“What’s going on?” he repeats.

“Blood bag wants to go back,” Claude announces bluntly.

“What?”

Flower clears his throat. “It’s actually not a bad idea,” he says grudgingly, sending Sidney an apologetic look. “The man makes some convincing points.”

“Like what?” Sidney demands, glaring first at Flower and then Geno, wondering what the hell is going through his head.

“Like you don’t know what lies beyond the Salt Plains,” Geno says, reminding Sidney of what he’d already told him the night before. “You drive for maybe a hundred days, and then what? Your food will have run out before then, and maybe you’ll have a bottle or two of water left. If you’re lucky.”

“Which we probably won’t be.”

Geno nods at Taylor’s bitter words. “It’s better to go back.”

“No! There is nothing to go back to,” Sidney exclaims, his eyes searching the faces around him, desperately looking for someone, anyone, to back him up.

He won’t go back. He won’t. He’ll die before letting Bettman touch him again.

“There is the green,” Geno says gently, and Sidney hates him a little in that moment, because that point alone is reason enough to go back.

‘Green’ means things that grow, and things that grow means food.

“Atop the rock towers.” Duper tilts his chin in acknowledgement. “They’re covered in it,” he says, and scratches at the scruff on his face thoughtfully. “There is water too, and lots of it.”

“There is already an irrigation system in place,” Derrick informs them all helpfully. “With a lot of healthy crops. Basically everything you’d need to survive long term as long as you don’t mind the height.”

Carole-Lynne looks at them sceptically. “Where does the water come from?”

Claude scowls. “Bettman has us pumping it up from deep in the earth. It’s good water. Clear.”

Sidney watches as Claude spits in the sand in obvious resentment. It’s hard work running the water pumps. And dangerous. Without access to the technology of their recent past, the war boys are forced to do most of the labour manually. Sidney knows there have been several casualties.

He sighs.

He is not going to win this fight. He never even stood a chance.

“He calls it aqua cola and claims it all for himself,” Sidney says. He shudders suddenly, and wraps his arms around himself to shield against the wind, trying to rub some warmth into his skin.

“And because he owns it,” Cameron speaks up, “he owns all of us.”

Sidney’s vision goes red hot for a second. “I am _not_ a thing to be owned!” he snarls at Cameron. He clenches his fingers into tight fists, his knuckles going white with the pressure of it.

Cameron’s jaw drops a little and his eyes grow wide, shocked at his ferocious words. He looks uncertainly from Sidney to his dad and then back again.

Sidney has watched him grow up, has had Cameron flitting around him for a number of years. When he was smaller, he would trail after Sidney whenever he had seen him out of the Vault. It used to annoy Flower like nothing else, but Sidney has always had time for the boy; this is the first time he has ever snapped at him.

Sidney hugs himself tighter.

“Of course you’re not,” Carole Lynne says, as if the very idea is the most ludicrous thing she has ever heard. Maybe it is. She’s known hardship and pain, has watched her friends and family die around here, but they have died free.

She’s never known slavery.

None of the Many Mothers have.

“Carole-Lynne is right, Sid,” Taylor says. “You’re not his slave. None of us are.”

She has been quiet for a little while, listening to them all patiently as they’ve gone back and forth. She’s done listening now. She looks at them intently, her eyes moving from face to face before she announces her decision to the group.

“We go back.”

Flower nods easily. “It’ll take us a couple of weeks, probably longer, to scale the side of the rock towers. They’re steeper than regular mountains.”

“We don’t scale the towers,” Geno says, shaking his head. “We go back the same way we came. Through the canyon.”

Sidney blinks at him, incredulous. Is he insane? “You’re insane.”

Geno can’t possibly expect them to tackle Bettman’s war fleet head on, not to mention the war parties from Bullet Farm and Gas Town. It’s a suicide mission.

Geno narrows his eyes at him in annoyance, and next to him, rather than dispute the idea as Sidney had hoped, Flower says, “Well, we already know it’s open again, right? Bettman brought all of his war parties through.”

On Flower’s other side, Tanger nods his head in agreement. “We took out the one car that caught up to us, but there were definitely more behind. We just managed to outrun them.”

“We can take the rig and a few of the bikes. And Duper has his car. We charge right through the middle of them, get to the canyon and talk Cookie into joining us. Then we decouple the tanker at the pass and shut it off behind us, and—”

“Boom!” Derrick finishes gleefully. He looks at Geno admiringly.

Geno nods, a small, dangerous smile lifting one corner of his mouth as he makes a gesture with his hand to indicate an explosion. “Boom,” he agrees.

“And how exactly are you expecting us to take the Citadel?” Sidney demands.

“Assuming we’re still alive by then,” Taylor adds, but she doesn’t look put off by the idea. In fact, she appears to be seriously contemplating it.

Duper makes a thoughtful sound. “If we can block the pass, it shouldn’t be too hard, actually. There are only war pups and war boys too sick to fight left in the Citadel. They won’t be able to hold up much of a defence.”

Taylor nods. “And if we can get this—Cookie, was it? If we can get him and his people to join us, we’d increase our chances of a successful mission. Maybe even without any casualties.”

“If you can promise him water, clean, drinkable water, Cookie will join,” Geno tells Taylor firmly.

Sidney is not surprised. Water is a rare and precious commodity; people kill over it daily.

“Then it is decided,” Taylor says. “We go back.”

She has made her choice, and nothing and no one—not even Sidney, not this time—is going to change her mind.

They’re going back to the Citadel.

**

Once they’re up and running, they tear through the desert as if the gates of hell have been unlocked and the devil himself has been unleashed from the pit of the earth and is nipping at their heels.

Around them, a swarm of Bettman’s war fleet descends from the sand dunes in pursuit of their party: the rig, Duper’s car, and seven bikes.

Sidney spares a second to close his eyes and pray for the gods to have mercy on them. Next to him, Beau grabs his hand and echoes his prayers.

“It’s going to be all right,” Geno lies badly, but Sidney clings to the words regardless. He gathers them close, imprints them onto his brain, and whispers the phrase to himself when they come under heavy fire, losing first one bike and then another—a third just narrowly avoids the same fate, and not without considerable damage. It won’t make it to the Citadel.

Danny and Cameron are on that bike.

In all the chaos, the fire and the explosions, there is no time to mourn the loss of the riders.

A car loaded with war boys manages to get ahead of them, intending to spike the wheels to slow them down, but Taylor, if not a very delicate driver, is a good one. The rig shakes ominously as some of the spikes ricochet into the large wheels, but they manage to avoid most of the damage, with Tanger sniping the war boys before they can try anything else.

They drive on.

There is not enough space for all of them in the cab, and Taylor ordered Derrick and Olli down into the hold along with Claude before they even took off; they’re given the task of removing the trap door in the floor so they can pour guzzoline to the sand below.

They have a lot of fuel and nothing to lose. Taylor gives the order, and Claude lights it up.

The sand bursts into flame, and the blaze of fire takes out a portion of the war fleet. It gives them just enough of a gap to make it to the canyon with enough time to have Geno fill Cookie in on the situation before Bettman catches up to them.

Cookie is less than pleased—furious, actually—but as Geno had predicted, he doesn’t turn down the promise of clean water.

“You fucking owe me your firstborn for this,” Cookie growls at Geno before turning to organise his people into formation, snapping at them to get their asses in gear.

Bettman catches up to them soon after. His large truck descends on Danny’s bike before he can manage to steer it away; it’s already been slowed down from all the damage its sustained, and Sidney watches from the rig, helpless to do anything to stop Bettman as he unloads a round of bullets into Cameron.

“This is your punishment for betraying me!” Bettman roars at Danny, and Danny doesn’t even have time to call his son’s name before he suffers the same fate. They fall off the bike, dead.

As if feeling Sidney’s gaze on him, Bettman looks up from his kill, and for a second, their eyes meet.

“Sidney!” he bellows. He points a finger in his direction. “Where is my son, Sidney?”

In the driver’s seat, Taylor snarls. She aims her gun out of the window and fires blindly behind her. “Shut the fuck up,” she growls.

There are too many people, too many vehicles for Sidney to keep track of from then on.

It’s all a big mess of oil and blood and fire. He sees Horny go down, his chest pierced by a war boy’s spear.

The roof to the cab of the rig gets torn off at some point, ripped asunder by harpoons and thick, heavy chains. The war boys launch more of them into the back of the rig in an effort to slow them down.

Geno, Tanger, and Flower almost lose their lives cutting the chains.

Someone presses a gun into Sidney’s hands. He stares at it, dismayed, for only a second before he’s forced to use it—and Geno’s lesson comes in handy after all; Sidney puts a bullet through the brain of a war boy who’s managed to get inside the cab, but not before he stabs Taylor in the side.

She howls in pain, the rig lurching sharply to the left before she gets her hand back on the steering wheel.

“Taylor!”

“Fuck. I’m fine. It’s fine.”

It’s not. She’s been stabbed, and Sidney can already see the blood seeping out of her side, staining her top a crimson red.

There’s no time to put any pressure on it, and Danny is gone. There is no one to help.

Sidney has nothing but useless hope and desperate prayers for her survival. For the survival of all of them.

He’s not sure it will be enough.

**

When it’s all said and done, they have only suffered six casualties, though several of them have sustained serious injuries, Taylor included.

They’re bloodied and exhausted, and Sidney’s hands are still trembling with adrenaline and fear.

He still can’t believe they made it out of the canyon alive. Most of them.

“Six out of twenty-three,” Taylor says in the quiet. “That’s not too bad. Better than expected, actually.” She’s lying in the sand next to Geno, shifting restlessly as they undergo a transfusion to replenish the blood she’d lost from the stab wound.

Claude is the one to oversee it. He’s gone through the process often enough to be familiar with the procedure. And without Danny—

Sidney says nothing. Taylor’s words are empty platitudes and they all know it.

Nothing, not the carnage of the war fleet behind them or Bettman’s head in a bloodied bag shoved carelessly in the backseat of Duper’s car can bring back the losses they’ve suffered.

Three of the Many Mothers and three of their own.

“We should have a funeral,” Caelan says. His face is a blank mask, his eyes dry.

Sidney can’t imagine the pain he must be going through.

“Dad would have liked us to have a funeral. Even if there are no bodies. Cameron too. They deserve a funeral.”

Sidney has to bite his lip to keep in the strangled sob threatening to escape. His last words to Cameron had been in anger, and now he is dead.

He was only fourteen.

Next to Caelan, Carson sniffles miserably and shuffles closer to his brother. They only have each other now.

“We will have a funeral,” Taylor promises. “We will make sure everyone knows of their bravery, and that they are remembered as the heroes they are. We’re free now, all of us, and we wouldn’t be without their sacrifice. I’ll never forget that. None of us will.”

Caelan nods at her in acknowledgement before excusing himself and his brother, distancing themselves from the rest of the group so they can grieve in peace.

Claude waits only long enough to make sure Taylor isn’t about to keel over before following after them, and Sidney watches from afar as the three huddle together, taking whatever comfort there is to be had from each other.

“When do we drive into the Citadel?”

“As soon as we’re done with this.” Taylor gestures to the tube running from Geno’s arm into her own. She grimaces distastefully. “Probably won’t be long now.”

Sidney nods.

The fighting had taken a lot out of her. Besides the stab wound, she lost her mechanical arm in the process of decapitating Bettman, only Geno saving her from falling to her death after she ripped out the mask keeping Bettman alive.

The give of it, and speed of the moving vehicle had been enough momentum to launch her off the car.

Geno had gotten there just in time.

Once Bettman was dead, the fight was all but over. The few vehicles that made it through the cave-in at the pass—an event assured by the sacrifice of one of the Many Mothers—had surrendered to Cookie’s people once they were greeted by the sight of Bettman’s cut off head.

Really, by then there was nothing more to fight for.

Cookie hadn’t spared much time before taking his leave, retreating to take care of his own dead and wounded.

“Don’t think I won’t be back for that water,” he growled before departing.

“What’s going to happen now?”

Sidney looks up from where he’s been staring at the sand. “What?”

Nikky fidgets under their combined gaze. “What’s going to happen now?” he asks again. “Who is going to run the Citadel? What happens to the people in the valley? And the war pups still in the rock towers?”

“I don’t know yet,” Taylor admits. “I just know that things will be different, that no one is going to have to live like slaves and that _everyone_ has a right to the water. Equal access for all.”

“It’s going to be a massive amount of work. The people...so many of them are sick. And to get the crops up and running to adequately feed all of us—”

“It’s going to take a long, long time,” Duper finishes for Flower.

Carole-Lynne offers them a tired smile. “We’ll help. We’ll come up with a plan and we’ll figure this out.”

Duper is too busy staring at her in admiration to respond. Flower rolls his eyes and smacks him upside the head. “Get it together, man,” he says.

Sidney ignores them all as they start bickering back and forth. He lets his eyes rove over their group, from Claude and the boys in the distance, to his sibling brides, to Taylor and Geno, and her men, and finally, what’s left of the Many Mothers.

His eyes settle on the lone male. Phil, he remembers, though Sidney has yet to speak to him.

His sister, Amanda, was the one who’d sacrificed herself.

Phil meets his gaze, his eyes red-rimmed and blotchy. He looks devastated.

Sidney wants to offer him his condolences, wants to apologise for having dragged them into his problems. He wants to apologise.

In the end, he says nothing.

There are no words that will bring her back—that will bring any of them back.

They are dead: Danny, Cameron, Horny, Amanda, Hilary, and Julie.

They’re all gone and never coming back. Just like his mother, and just like his child.

Sidney is the one who is left. Sidney and Geno, Taylor, all of them, they have to live for those who are gone. They have to honour their sacrifice.

They have to live free. This is their redemption.

 

******

**EPILOGUE: GENO**

**

 

Geno is wary when they enter the Citadel.

The last time he was here, he’d been there as a war boy’s blood bag. Now he returns with the same war boy as brothers in arms.

It’s a novel experience, and so is the feeling of unease that is festering inside of him; this is his companions’ home, Sidney’s home.

It is not Geno’s, nor will it ever be. He doesn’t belong here, but—

Geno is having a hard time convincing himself he can’t stay. The rebuilding of the Citadel is not his task; Geno has a mission of his own.

Somewhere out there are his people. He’s sure of it now, and Geno will find them.

A loud cheer builds from the crowd around the sorry remnants of their vehicles, celebrating the death of their tyrant and demanding Taylor’s admittance to the rock towers.

She stands before the people proudly, still staggering from her injury, but her chin is tilted defiantly as she holds up Bettman’s severed head in victory. She is young, but so very strong, and in that moment she looks exactly like the imperator she is.

As irritating as he finds her, Geno is oddly proud of her.

For a moment, it looks as if the remaining war boys will refuse them entry, but the impatience of the crowd spurs them on, and if they wait much longer, they will have a long-overdue riot on their hands.

The war boys lower the platform.

The people swarm it immediately, helped on by the omegas and Taylor’s men.

Geno takes advantage of the chaotic crowd, slipping in between the pushing bodies until he’s far away enough from the rising platform that he can still see Taylor up there, giving her a brief respectful nod when their eyes meet.

She nods back at him, offering the barest hints of a smile before her jaw goes slack, an expression of shock and something like fear settling over her face.

Geno frowns in confusion, but before he can figure out the source of Taylor’s shock, the people pushing against him have him moving to the edge of the crowd, lest he gets trampled by those trying to force their way towards the centre and the rush of water down one side of the rock towers.

He can’t help the smile that steals across his face at the sight of the waterfall. He’s never seen anything like it.

It’s beautiful.

It’s almost a shame that he won’t be here to see Cookie’s face when he comes back for his promised treat.

It’s sure to shut him up.

Geno pats his pockets for the keys he nicked off Duper before leaving; he’ll be pissed at him for stealing his car, but Geno figures they owe him. His own was stolen by the war boys and totalled during the fight.

He comes to a sudden stop when he reaches the car, staring unblinkingly at the hood.

“Hi,” Sidney says.

Suddenly, Taylor’s shock makes perfect sense.

“What are you doing here, Sidney?” Geno asks tiredly. The voices inside his head are blessedly quiet, but Geno doesn’t need either of them to point out the danger of Sidney breaking his heart and his resolve.

This is precisely why he snuck away, so he wouldn't have to say goodbye.

(So Sidney can’t convince him to stay.)

“The same as you, I imagine.”

“Stealing Duper’s car?”

Sidney shifts a little at that. “Borrowing,” he corrects and gently eases off the hood, looking at Geno expectantly. “Well? Aren’t you going to unlock the car?”

Geno closes his eyes and takes a deep breath to gather the tattered remnants of his patience—it’s a mistake; he breathes in a lungful of Sidney’s sweet scent, healthier now that the trace of rot and death is gone. He smells—

 _Fertile_ , a gleeful voice inside his head whispers, and Geno is reminded of what Sidney is.

What they both are.

 _Alpha and omega_.

Finally, Geno understands what that means.

“Geno?”

When his lids flick open, Sidney is right in front of him, his eyes large and so very green. He cups Geno’s face in his hands, his skin as soft as when they’d first touched almost three days ago.

“What are you doing?” Geno whispers. Sidney has implied that he’s coming with him, but if this is him saying goodbye—

He isn’t sure he’ll survive it.

“I can’t stay here,” Sidney says. “Too many bad memories, too much hurt. The pain is still too raw.” He presses closer, leaning in until their lips touch gently, his thumb stroking over the slope of Geno’s cheekbones. “And besides, I don’t want to leave you, and you won’t stay, so. I’ll go with you.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

Geno looks at him long and hard, searching his face for any signs of hesitation. There are none.

“Taylor will be angry,” he says. “Flower too.” Flower will be furious. Geno has come to understand that he’s been Sidney’s personal guard for a very long time; to have his charge outside the sphere of his protection will absolutely infuriate him.

Geno is a little smug about that.

“Yes,” Sidney says easily. He presses another kiss to Geno’s mouth. “I don’t care.”

“I don’t know where I’m going,” Geno warns him.

“That’s okay.”

“And I don’t know when we’ll get back. If we ever will.”

“Understood.”

“And it will probably be dangerous,” Geno adds, needing him to understand that there are no guarantees here.

Sidney snorts. “More dangerous than what we’ve already been through?” he asks pointedly.

Geno sighs, lifting his hands to settle on Sidney’s hips, drawing him flush to him. “I just want you to be aware of what you’re getting yourself into. I want to find my people, but it might never happen. I don’t even know where to begin to look.”

“Then we will figure it out together. You and me.”

“You and me?” He likes the sound of that. He has never been part of a ‘you and me’ before, has been on his own for most of his life, but he wants this. He wants Sidney.

“You and me,” Sidney promises. “All you have to do is ask.”

Geno grins at that. He knows what comes next. He says, “Come with me?”

“Yes,” Sidney breathes out, breaking into his own sunny smile when Geno laughs happily before claiming his mouth in a hungry kiss, taking what is freely given.

 _Yes_ , he said, as Geno already knew he would.

There was never any other answer.

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr](https://www.hazel3017.tumblr.com)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Restitution by Hazel_3017](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11116905) by [brightnail](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brightnail/pseuds/brightnail)




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